PROVIDENCE, R.I. — While hiding in a rented storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire—likely moments before taking his own life—Claudio Neves Valente recorded four brief video statements, his final words about the horrors he inflicted during the mass shooting at Brown University and in Brookline, Massachusetts, where MIT physics Professor Nuno Loureiro was murdered in his home.
“I have no interest in being famous,” Neves Valente said.
“I don’t give a damn about how you judge me or what you think of me.”
But the statements, released by the Boston US Attorney’s office, taken together provide an insight into why this all happened.
Northeastern University Criminologist James Alan Fox is the co-author of Extreme Killing: Understanding Serial and Mass Murder.
He told Boston 25 that he believes Neves Valente, despite what he said, like other mass killers, was motivated to set across a simple message.
“They want us to know, that they’re not just a nut who killed for no good reason. He had a reason; it’s just not 100% particularly clear. But he had a reason, and he’s not crazy,” said Fox.
Fox believes Brown University was targeted because that’s where Neves Valente, a once promising physics student, dropped out of the Ivy League School’s program.
And he believes it was jealousy that led Neves Valente to kill the MIT Professor, who attended the same high school physics program in Portugal.
Among Neves Valente’s final words: “I am not going to apologize because during my lifetime no one sincerely apologized to me.”
“What true of mass shooters is, particularly those who take their own life because they feel like they’re miserable, they’re so unhappy, things haven’t worked out well, but it’s not their fault,” said Fox.
“It’s other people’s fault, and other people have to suffer for what he’s gone through,” he added.
This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.
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