• User known only as “John” described seeing grey Nissan with Florida plates near campus building before attack
  • Tip led police to rental car records that identified 48-year-old Portuguese national as gunman
  • Suspect found dead in New Hampshire storage unit after six-day multi-state manhunt

PROVIDENCE, RI (TDR) — A Reddit post breakthrough from an anonymous tipster proved to be the pivotal moment that cracked open the investigation into the deadly Brown University shooting, leading authorities to identify the gunman and link him to the murder of an MIT professor two days later.

The user, identified only as “John” in court documents, had a series of bizarre encounters with the suspect on the day of the shooting and later shared those observations on the social media platform, providing investigators with the critical vehicle information they had been unable to obtain through other means.

Reddit Post Breakthrough Came After Days of Dead Ends

For three days following the December 13 attack that killed two students and wounded nine others inside Brown’s Barus & Holley engineering building, investigators struggled to connect a vehicle to their person of interest. That changed on December 16 when the tip command center received information referencing a post on the Providence subreddit that would transform the investigation.

“He blew this case right open.”

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha made that declaration about the anonymous tipster during a Thursday night press conference announcing the suspect had been found dead.

The Reddit user described seeing a “grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental” near the shooting scene and detailed multiple strange encounters with the man who would later be identified as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente.

Tipster Described Bizarre “Cat and Mouse” Game

According to the police affidavit, John first encountered Neves Valente inside a bathroom on the ground floor of the engineering building hours before the attack. He immediately noticed the suspect’s clothing seemed “inappropriate and inadequate for the weather.”

The encounters continued outside, where John watched Neves Valente suddenly turn away from the grey Nissan when he spotted John approaching. What followed was a game of cat and mouse through the streets near campus.

“Your car is back there, why are you circling the block?”

John reportedly yelled that question at the suspect, who responded defensively, asking repeatedly why John was “harassing” him. When John later saw police release images of a person of interest, he recognized the man immediately and took to Reddit with his observations.

Other users urged him to contact the FBI directly, which he did.

Vehicle Information Unlocked Entire Investigation

The Reddit post breakthrough gave Providence police access to more than 70 street cameras operated by surveillance company Flock Safety. Officers traced the Nissan Sentra with Florida plates to an Alamo Rent-a-Car location in Boston, where rental records revealed the suspect’s identity.

Surveillance footage from the rental agency showed Neves Valente wearing the same clothing captured in earlier images of the person of interest. Investigators discovered he had been observed intermittently in the Brown University area between December 1 and December 12.

After the shooting, Neves Valente attempted to evade detection by placing an unregistered Maine license plate over the rental car’s Florida tags.

Suspect Linked to MIT Professor’s Murder

The vehicle connection also tied Neves Valente to the December 15 shooting death of MIT nuclear physics professor Nuno Loureiro at his Brookline, Massachusetts home. Both men were Portuguese nationals who attended the same university in Lisbon during the same period, though authorities have not disclosed a specific motive.

Neves Valente, 48, was a former Brown graduate student who attended the university from 2000 to 2001, meaning he would have taken classes in the very building where he carried out the attack more than two decades later.

Authorities found him dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound Thursday evening inside a storage unit he rented in Salem, New Hampshire. Two firearms and a satchel matching evidence from the crime scenes were recovered nearby.

The FBI has not confirmed whether “John” will receive the $50,000 reward offered for information about the shooting.

When traditional investigative methods stalled, could this case mark a turning point for how law enforcement views crowdsourced tips from social media platforms?

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