Cláudio Neves Valente would have chosen people and institutions that he associated with the failure of his own life
Cláudio Neves Valente, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and two students from Brown University in the United States, chose the victims with precision, argue the case’s investigators.
Cláudio Neves Valente, 48, a former student at Brown University and Instituto Superior Técnico, appears to have chosen places and people for what they represented in his own life – institutions and individuals he associated with personal failure, missed opportunities and perceived injustice.
In a detailed behavioral assessment released on Wednesday, the FBI says it spent years planning the attack, in isolation, before killing two students and injuring nine others inside an engineering building at the North American university, on December 13 last year. Two days later, he killed Nuno Loureiro, in Brookline, Massachusetts. , the victim of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound, inside a warehouse in Salem, New Hampshire, ending a multi-state search.
The FBI describes a man who spent years isolated, rarely staying in one place and without traditional support systems such as family, colleagues and authority figures who could have recognized warning signs and alerted authorities. Over time, according to researchers, Cláudio constructed a narrative of resentment and inadequacy, with “little or no opportunity for observers to observe and contextualize the meaning of his behaviors.”
“He appeared to struggle with how he viewed his achievements in life and felt considerably marginalized by others,” the FBI wrote in the report. “As his failures outweighed his successes, his paranoia increased, worsening his continued inability to thrive and driving him into a state of mental malaise and a determination to die.”
Authorities said the violence itself was “symbolic in nature.” Brown and Laurel University, the researchers wrote, represented to the shooter “his personal failures and the injustices he perceived had been inflicted by others over time.”
“By attacking them, Neves Valente likely managed to overcome his shame and envy, using violence to punish communities that he perceived to have contributed to his downfall,” the FBI states.
However, even in presenting this picture, the researchers acknowledged its limitations, noting that only Neves Valente himself knew the full reason behind the attacks and that mental health stressors alone cannot fully explain them.
After the attacks, investigators stated that Neves Valente, who confessed to the shootings, expressed no remorse and voiced some of the complaints later outlined in the FBI assessment, but did not offer a clear explanation for his actions. Investigators also emphasize that Neves Valente acted alone and that the attacks had no known connection to terrorism.
Neves Valente attended Brown University as a doctoral student for a very brief period in the early 2000s, but did not complete the program. This, according to the researchers, later ended up influencing the way he saw the institution. The firearms used in the attacks were acquired legally in Florida years earlier, investigators say.
The findings come as students were injured in the attack, alleging that the university ignored advance warnings about the shooter and failed to provide adequate security that could have prevented the tragedy.
