PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — Law enforcement is analyzing a tranche of new evidence recovered from the New Hampshire storage facility where agents found the dead suspect in the Brown University shooting and MIT professor slaying.
Federal officials are hopeful the evidence could help shed light on what motivated Claudio Manuel Neves Valente to kill two people and injure nine more at Brown last Saturday and kill MIT professor Nuno Loureiro inside his Brookline, Massachusetts, home on Monday.
The evidence included two 9mm pistols, more than 200 rounds of ammunition, multiple high-capacity magazines, body armor, various IDs, multiple phones and thumb drives, according to Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Leah Foley.
“Those are being analyzed by the FBI to see if things can be extracted that could help in understanding the motives,” Foley told NewsNation affiliate WPRI on Friday.
Investigators now believe Neves Valente may have been wearing the body armor when he committed the murders across two states.
“There is a mound of evidence,” Foley said, adding that the investigation into what happened doesn’t end now just because Neves Valente is dead.
“We have no evidence that he was working with anyone, but we are going to comb through all the evidence to assure ourselves and the public that there was no one else involved in this,” she said.
“The victims’ families have a right to know,” she added.
Thursday night, dozens of law enforcement officers swarmed the storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, after locating an abandoned car police believe Neves Valente used to evade police during a six-day interstate manhunt.
Several officers entered the facility where they found Neves Valente alone inside an empty storage unit with a spent bullet cartridge next to his body, according to Foley.
“The last time he swiped into the facility was the night of Dec. 15, and there’s no security footage capturing him ever leaving after he entered,” she said.
New Hampshire’s chief federal medical examiner said Friday an autopsy showed he died as a result of a gunshot wound to the head. The manner of death was suicide. He is estimated to have died on Dec. 16.
The estimated time of death conflicts with a Rhode Island police affidavit, which reported Neves Valente called a car rental agency at a Connecticut airport to change a drop-off location. R.I. Attorney General Peter Neronha’s spokesperson Tim Rondeau said that was bad intelligence.
“Bad information was provided to us,” Rondeau said. “We learned that the info was bad after we already submitted the affidavit.”
Records show Neves Valente rented a separate storage unit from where he died, which is where agents found the tranche of evidence, Foley said.
“The one he rented was double-locked,” she said. “He was found in an unoccupied unit.”
As of Friday afternoon, forensic testing on the spent bullet hadn’t been completed.
But Foley said she’s certain Neves Valente is responsible for killing the students at Brown and the MIT professor based on video evidence, financial records and the recovery of a yellow security vest that he was seen wearing after the Brookline murder.
Foley described Neves Valente as “sophisticated” in his effort to evade capture, saying he didn’t have much of an online footprint. He also used a Google phone that prevented investigators from tracking him in real time, and he used cards that weren’t in his name to make purchases.
“There was a lot of planning that went into the killings, and he was intentional about trying to remain under the radar,” Foley explained.
Foley said it remains unclear why Neves Valente planned his attacks now and whether he was planning any additional attacks after killing Loureiro. But she highlighted that he drove directly to the Salem storage facility after killing the professor and changed his behavior.
“It was interesting that after he shot the professor in Brookline, he was captured on a security camera without a mask on,” she said, underscoring that this was only speculation.
“It seemed like he felt like he had done what he wanted to do,” she said.