The man who killed two students at Brown University in the US and then an MIT professor has confessed to his crimes in a video recorded after the events, in which he appears unrepentant about his actions and does not mention his motive, US authorities said yesterday, Tuesday.
The U.S. Justice Department noted that the video was discovered during authorities’ search of the New Hampshire warehouse where Claudio Neves Valente was found dead after he committed suicide on December 18, five days after his attack on Brown.
Neves Valente, 48, stormed the physics building of that university, located in Rhode Island, on December 13 and opened fire on students as they were taking exams. The shooting killed Ella Cook and Muhammad Aziz Umurzokov, and injured nine others.
Two days later he went to Boston, Massachusetts, about 50 miles away, to the home of a well-known MIT professor, Nuno Lureiro, and killed him.
Neves Valente had arrived in the US from Portugal 25 years ago to study physics at Brown, but never got his degree.
“I don’t care how you judge me or what you think of me,” he said in the video. “I’m not interested in becoming famous, leaving a legacy or anything like that (…) I have no patience for that.”
Moreover, in the video, Neves Valente stresses that he liked the fact that US President Donald Trump called him an “animal”. “He called me an animal, which is true. I’m an animal just like him.”
He appeared to be referring to Trump’s statements in May 2018, when he had called immigrants “animals” and called for a stricter immigration policy.
Meanwhile, Neves Valente stressed that “I don’t hate America“. Although he then added “I don’t love it”, assessing that it was a mistake for him to go to the US.
He also complained about being injured during his attack on Lureiro.
“He admitted that he had been planning the attack on Brown for some time,” the Justice Department said in a statement.
This video has not been made public.
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