Journalism of Courage
After days of frantic search, investigators in the US have found the body of the man who is believed to be the masked gunman who shot dead two students at Brown University and also killed an MIT professor.
The suspect, Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, was found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility on Thursday night from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
In the six days, the Providence police and the FBI were searching for the suspect they received hundreds of calls and leads about the elusive suspect.
But it was an anonymous Reddit post that finally led the police to the killer.
A Reddit user, who has only been identified as “John” in a Providence police affidavit, posted about a strange encounter with another man on a sidewalk outside Brown University.
According to police, John had several encounters with Claudio Neves Valente before Saturday’s attack. As police posted images of a person of interest — now identified as Neves Valente — John began posting on the social media forum Reddit that he recognised the person and suggested that police should look into “possibly a rental” grey Nissan.
Reddit users urged him to tell the FBI, and John said he did. The police affidavit said they learned about the tip on December 16, three days after the shooting and a day after the tip line was created.
That detail led them to get more video of a Nissan Sentra sedan with Florida plates and enabled Providence police officers to tap into a network of more than 70 street cameras operated around the city by surveillance company Flock Safety.
The affidavit says John gave investigators additional critical details: he encountered Neves Valente in the bathroom of the engineering building just hours before the attack, where John noted the suspect’s clothing was “inappropriate and inadequate for the weather.”
John also bumped into Neves Valente outside, mere blocks from the building, where John watched Neves Valente “suddenly” turn around from the Nissan when he saw John. What ensued was then a “game of cat and mouse,” according to John’s testimony — where the two would encounter each other and Neves Valente would run away.
At one point, John says he yelled out “Your car is back there, why are you circling the block?”
“The Suspect responded, ‘I don’t know you from nobody,’ then Suspect repeatedly asked, ’Why are you harassing me?’” according to the affidavit.
John told police he eventually saw Neves Valente approach the Nissan sedan once more and decided to walk away.
“Respectfully, I have said all I have to say on the matter to the right people,” John wrote on Reddit Wednesday night.
“He blew this case right open,” said Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha.
