By Danya Gainor, CNN
This handout image of CCTV footage released on December 18, 2025 in an affidavit by the Providence Police Department shows Claudio Neves Valente, the suspect in the Brown University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) shootings, at an Alamo rental car location in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 1, 2025. Photo: AFP PHOTO / PROVIDENCE POLICE DEPARTMENT
The suspect in last month's mass shooting at Brown University and subsequent killing of an MIT professor admitted to the attacks in a series of short videos authorities recovered from an electronic device, the US Attorney's Office for the District of Massachusetts says.
The office released transcripts of the four videos taken after the deadly December shootings by suspect Claudio Neves Valente, translated from Portuguese to English. Valente did not offer a motive - or apologies - for the attacks in the videos.
The federal investigation into Valente's motives will continue, the US attorney's office said.
Two students - Ella Cook and MukhammadAziz Umurzokov - died in the attack at Brown, while Nuno FG Loureiro, an MIT professor, was fatally shot at his home near Boston.
In one video, Valente said he didn't care about being famous or leaving a legacy in the wake of the shooting, and "even though I would have a lot to say and write", he lacked the patience for a manifesto.
Valente said he had been planning the attack for more than six semesters and had "plenty of opportunities" to carry out the shooting earlier, but "always chickened out".
In the more than 11 minutes Valente spoke, he offered vague misgivings about unnamed people, addressed how he was portrayed in the media in the days after the shooting and detailed what he saw in the Brown auditorium that he attacked.
Valente said he had no regret in the attacks, only that they resulted in a serious eye injury after he was struck by a shell round.
"I don't give a damn about how you judge me or what you think of me," Valente said in one video.
Suspect details what he saw in the auditorium he attacked
Valente said he "never" wanted to conduct the shooting at Brown University in an auditorium.
"I wanted to do it in a regular room," he said. "So, it all went wrong."
When he walked into the auditorium, Valente said he only saw one man in the classroom and thought the others had left through the emergency exit after the shooting started.
He didn't realise multiple students were hiding in the classroom when he believed it to be empty and left, Valente said.
The suspect said the people who hid "were kind of stupid" for not using the emergency exit.
- CNN
