INVESTIGATORS have uncovered a 30-year-old clue linking a murdered MIT professor and his suspected killer.
Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, suspected of killing of Nuno F.G. Loureiro, is also thought to have been responsible for a mass shooting at Brown University, Providence.
Neves Valente, who has since been found dead, is suspected to be the mass-shooter who killed two students and injured nine on December 13.
Police have now revealed a mysterious link between the suspect and famous MIT professor Loureiro, who was shot two days after the Brown shooting.
Police said the 47-year-old MIT professor, was fatally shot at his home in the Brookline, Boston, by his former classmate.
The pair attended the Instituto Superior Técnico together in Portugal, three decades before Neves Valente is alleged to have shot the prof.
They studied at the same Lisbon university for five years, from 1995 – 2000.
Neves Valente and his future alleged victim attended Instituto Superior Técnico, a top engineering school in the Portuguese capital.
Loureiro graduated from the Instituto Superior Técnico in 2000, with a degree in physics, and went on to work as a researcher at the institute.
In 2016, he moved to the US where he joined MIT as a professor of nuclear science and engineering.
Records suggest that in 2000, when Loureiro graduated with a physics degree, Neves Valente was let go from a position at the university.
The suspected shooter then came to the US on a student visa.
Neves Valente had been working towards a PhD at Brown from 2000, but had dropped out of the programme in 2003.
In 2017, the suspect came back to the US as a legal permanent resident.
As investigators scramble to find a motive for the MIT prof’s murder and the mass shooting at Brown, this link between Neves Valente and his former classmate could help them piece things together.
It comes as police revealed details of an anonymous tip-off which helped lead them to the suspect.
The six-day manhunt for the 48-year-old Portuguese national was only brought to an end after a simple comment on Reddit triggered a breakthrough, cops said.
On December 16, a tipster, known as John, posted: “I’m being dead serious. The police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental.”
This seemingly innocuous comment, written in response to an FBI information poster, lead to a breakthrough in the case.
The information from mysterious poster, ‘John’, “blew this case right open”, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha of Rhode Island said.
After leaving his comment on Reddit, John spoke to cops in person.
He told police he had seen Neves Valente in a ground-floor bathroom of Brown University’s Barus and Holley building, around two hours before the first shots were heard on campus.
The pair made eye-contact, and John followed the shady character as he left the building later telling cops it had been like “a game of cat and mouse”.
John saw the suspect unlock a grey Nissan, and it was this detail that lead investigators to a car rental.
Car rental agreements revealed Neves Valente’s name, which helped cops link the suspect to the murdered MIT prof.
The killings at Brown happened near the end of an economics class on Saturday, as students were preparing to sit exams.
Around 60 students were in a lecture theatre when the shooter burst in and opened fire at around 4pm.
Some students fled, while others dived for shelter under chairs and behind desks.
One of the two people killed was sophomore student Ella Cook, 19.
Cook, from Alabama, was the vice president of the school’s Republican club.
The other victim killed was identified as Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, a first-year student from Uzbekistan.
Nine people were injured in the shooting. Kendall Turner, a Durham Academy graduate, is in critical condition.
