The Manhunt Ended in a Storage Unit. The Answers Died With Him.

They know who he is. Now they need to find him.

That's how I ended my last post on the Brown University shooting. A day later, they found him. In a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire. Dead by his own hand.

But here's the thing nobody's talking about: he was already dead when they found him.

The autopsy came back Friday. Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, died on December 16th. Two full days before police finally tracked him to that storage unit. While over 400 law enforcement officers searched three states, while the FBI deployed "national resources," while Kash Patel tweeted about progress, while parents pulled their kids from campus early, while Benjamin Erickson sat detained for hours as the wrong man, the actual shooter was already gone.

He killed two Brown students on December 13th. He killed MIT professor Nuno Loureiro on December 15th. And then, on December 16th, he drove to that storage unit, walked inside, and made sure nobody would ever get answers from him.

Three people dead because of him. And he'll never face a jury.

The Investigation That Wasn't

Look, I try to give law enforcement the benefit of the doubt. Investigations are hard. The public doesn't understand the process. You can't solve a case in minutes; sometimes it takes days. I've heard all of it.

But this investigation was a disaster from the start.

On Saturday, hours after the shooting, President Trump announced on social media that "the suspect is in custody." FBI Director Kash Patel followed with a lengthy post boasting about the FBI's work detaining "a person of interest in a hotel room in Coventry, RI."

That person was Benjamin Erickson. He wasn't the shooter. He was released within hours. But for those critical hours, while the real shooter was still alive and apparently mobile, the FBI was congratulating itself on catching the wrong guy.

Former Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem told CNN the misidentification delayed the investigation by 18 hours. Eighteen hours. It snowed on Sunday. Evidence was buried. And the actual shooter? He shot an MIT professor on Monday.

If they had the right man on Saturday, Nuno Loureiro might still be alive.

The Reddit Hero

Want to know who actually cracked this case? Not the 400+ officers. Not the FBI's "national resources." Not Patel's tweets.

A guy named John.

John is a Reddit user who happened to be near Brown University on December 13th, just hours before the shooting. He encountered a man in the bathroom of the Barus & Holley building and noticed something off. The man's clothing was "inappropriate and inadequate for the weather." John followed him outside and watched him approach a grey Nissan with Florida plates, then back away when he noticed John watching.

It turned into what John described as "a game of cat and mouse." They kept crossing paths on the block. At one point, they got within two feet of each other. John asked him: "Your car is back there, why are you circling the block?"

The man responded: "I don't know you from nobody. Why are you harassing me?"

John walked away. Two hours later, that same man walked into a lecture hall and opened fire.

On December 16th, after police released photos of the person of interest, John posted on Reddit that they needed to "look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates." He described exactly what he saw. Other Reddit users urged him to contact the FBI. He did.

Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha didn't mince words: "He blew this case right open."

John's tip led investigators to Alamo Rent-a-Car in Boston. They pulled rental records. They found Valente's name. They matched the surveillance video. That's the image you see at the top of this post, Valente picking up the car on November 17th, nearly a month before the shooting. Same clothes he wore on December 13th when he cased the building. Same clothes he wore when he killed three people and wounded nine others.

One anonymous citizen on Reddit did what hundreds of trained investigators couldn't.

The Intended Target

Now we know something else. Ella Cook and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, the two Brown students killed that Saturday, may not have been the real targets at all.

U.S. Attorney Leah Foley confirmed that Nuno Loureiro, the MIT professor killed two days later, was the intended victim. Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at Instituto Superior Técnico in Lisbon, Portugal's premier engineering school, from 1995 to 2000.

Both were physics students. Loureiro graduated in 2000 and went on to a brilliant career. He did postdoctoral work at Princeton. He joined MIT in 2016. He became a rising star in nuclear science and plasma physics. His colleagues called him "imaginative," "gifted," an "enthusiastic mentor."

Valente? He came to Brown in 2000 for a PhD program. Took a leave in 2001. Formally withdrew in 2003. On his 2017 visa application, under "degree or diploma," he wrote: "None-Dropout."

Twenty-five years of apparent resentment. We may never know exactly what grievance festered inside him all that time. But we know he flew to New England in early October. He rented a car in November. He spent weeks casing the Barus & Holley building, the same building where he once took physics classes, the same building where his academic dreams died a quarter century ago.

And then, on December 13th, for reasons we'll never fully understand, he walked into a lecture hall full of students taking an economics exam and started shooting.

Investigators say there's "no indication" Valente knew the Brown students. They were collateral damage in a decades-old vendetta against a former classmate 50 miles away.

Ella Cook was 19. From Birmingham, Alabama. A sophomore. Vice president of Brown College Republicans. She was there reviewing for a final.

Aziz Umurzokov was 18. From Virginia, with roots in Uzbekistan. A freshman. He wanted to be a neurosurgeon. He was there reviewing for a final.

They died because they were in the wrong building when a man with a 25-year grudge came back to settle old scores.

The Policy Response

Within hours of learning Valente's identity, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the Trump administration would "immediately suspend" the diversity visa lottery program. Valente entered the U.S. in 2000 on a student visa and obtained permanent residency through the diversity lottery in 2017.

I'm not going to relitigate immigration policy here. What I will say is this: using the deaths of three people, before investigators even understood the motive, to justify a policy change that was already on the administration's agenda is exactly the kind of reactive policymaking that undermines serious analysis.

Valente was already in the country legally for 17 years before he got the diversity visa. He was here on a student visa. He was a physics PhD candidate at Brown. The diversity lottery didn't bring him here; it regularized status he already had.

If you want to have a debate about immigration policy, have it honestly. Don't stand on the graves of Ella Cook and Aziz Umurzokov to make points they can't contest.

No Accountability

Claudio Neves Valente will never stand trial. He'll never face the families of the people he killed. He'll never be cross-examined about his motive. He'll never be forced to answer for the terror he inflicted.

The system worked for Benjamin Erickson, the man wrongly detained on Saturday. He was released when the evidence didn't support holding him. Due process protected him from being railroaded as a convenient scapegoat. That's how the system should work.

But for the victims and their families? There's no trial. No verdict. No moment of accountability. Just a storage unit in New Hampshire and a lifetime of unanswered questions.

The investigation continues. FBI Special Agent Ted Docks said "our work is not done." They're still searching Valente's digital footprint, his storage unit, his rental records, trying to piece together why. Maybe they'll find something. Maybe they won't.

What they won't find is justice. Not in the courtroom sense. That died in a storage unit on December 16th, two days before anyone found it.

📄 READ THE AFFIDAVIT Providence Police Criminal Affidavit (PDF)

The affidavit is linked above. Read it yourself. See how the custodian noticed him weeks before. See how John's tip connected the dots. See how close they came to catching him alive, and how they missed.

Three families will bury their loved ones this holiday season. The shooter took the coward's way out. And the questions that could explain why any of this happened will never be answered in a court of law.

Sometimes the system doesn't fail because it was corrupt or unjust. Sometimes it fails because the person responsible removes themselves from its reach entirely. And all we're left with is grief, and silence, and a storage unit in New Hampshire.