PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — The gunman who killed two Brown University students and an MIT professor last month said in a video recorded before his own death that he didn’t “give a damn about how you judge me or what you think of me,” according to transcripts released Tuesday.
“I think the world cannot be redeemed,” he said, referring to all of humanity as “monkeys.”
Massachusetts U.S. Attorney Leah Foley said the video was one of four that authorities discovered when they found the body of the gunman, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, inside a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire. They are in Portuguese and dated Dec. 16, the day an autopsy shows Neves Valente died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Neves Valente, a onetime Brown physics graduate student who left the university in 2003, was born and raised in Portugal, where he attended the same physics program as the MIT professor he murdered, Nuno Loureiro.
The gunman’s expletive-laced comments are rambling at times, but he appears to indicate he had been planning the shootings for the last six semesters and “had plenty of opportunities, especially this semester,” yet had repeatedly “chickened out.” He also estimated he had been renting the storage facility for three years.
“To say that I was extraordinarily satisfied, no, but I also don’t regret what I did,” Neves Valente said in the first video, which he says was recorded at 10 p.m. and is listed as lasting more than six minutes.
Authorities have said an unidentified individual named “John,” who posted on Reddit about confronting the shooter and recalled his license plate, played a crucial role in cracking the case. Neves Valente appears to reference that interaction in one of the videos.
“I was almost confronted by a guy there that day — not almost, I actually was confronted and he knew my, my, my license plate,” he said. “I honestly never thought it would take them so long to find me.” He also said being confronted was the “catalyst” that led him to overcome his hesitations and actually open fire at Brown on Dec. 13.
Two Brown students, Ella Cook and MukhammadAziz Umurzokov, were killed in the shooting. Nine other students were injured, the last of whom was released from the hospital on Monday.
The U.S. attorney’s office said the investigation into the shooting “remains ongoing” but that “authorities do not believe there are any ongoing public safety threats associated with the shootings.” Additional information will be released when it becomes available, though the videos are not being released at this time, the office said.
Throughout the videos, Neves Valente expressed a deep sense of grievance, saying he “began to grow suspicious” as early as age three, seemingly about the motivations of others. “I did not like any one of you,” he said. He also describes coming to America, first as a graduate student in the early 2000s and then again in 2017, as “a [expletive] mistake.”
Yet he also expressed mixed feelings about the precise way the attack unfolded, saying, “I never wanted to do it in an auditorium. I wanted to do it in a regular room. … So it all went wrong.”
The U.S. attorney’s office said Neves Valente injured his eye when he shot the MIT professor “at close range,” and in the videos he laughed as he remarked that the injury was his only regret. He said he opted to take off his glasses to kill Loureiro because he feared they would fog up.
“Now it’s my time to leave, on my own terms,” he said. “I am not going to apologize, because during my lifetime no one sincerely apologized to me.” He also wondered aloud if he would have the courage to shoot himself, “because it was hard as hell to do it to all of these people, man. It was hard as hell. … I envy those who have no difficulty doing it.”
Neves Valente indicated he had been following news coverage of the shootings and their aftermath. “I particularly like Trump’s [expletive], to have — have called me an animal, which is true,” Neves Valente said in the videos, referring to the president’s comments about him. “I am an animal and he is also.”
He insisted it would be “nonsense” to describe him as mentally ill.
“I am sane, and [pause] I’ve always been, more or less,” he said, adding, “I don’t care at all about being famous, having a legacy, and [expletive] like that, manifestos and [expletive] stuff. I have absolutely no patience for that. Even though I would have a lot to say and write. I don’t care.”
In one video, Neves Valente went out of his way to dismiss allegations spread on social media that he had shouted “Allahu Akbar” when he began firing at Brown. He suggested he might have shouted “Oh no!” because he initially thought the auditorium was empty, before realizing that the students in the room were hiding. He mocked them for not using an emergency exit.
The transcripts show Neves Valente was planning to send three emails that might shed more light on why he committed the crimes. Those messages have not yet been separately confirmed or released.
In a statement, Providence Police Col. Oscar Perez confirmed that federal authorities have “assumed an expanded role” in the investigation into the Brown and MIT shootings, after his department led the initial efforts.
“We recognize the profound impact these crimes have had on the victims’ families and the Brown and MIT communities,” Perez said. “We echo federal officials in stating there is no known ongoing public safety threat and remain committed to supporting our partners as the investigation continues.”