Federal prosecutors on Tuesday released transcripts of videos they say were recorded by the gunman responsible for last month’s mass shooting at Brown University and the killing of an MIT professor, revealing chilling, first-person statements marked by contempt and a complete lack of remorse.
In the recordings, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, repeatedly rejected responsibility for the violence, saying, “I did not like any one of you,” and adding, “To say that I was extraordinarily satisfied, no, but I also don’t regret what I did.”
Neves Valente opened fire on students preparing for final exams at Brown on Dec. 13, killing Ella Cook, 19, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, and wounding nine others, authorities said. Two days later, investigators say he fatally shot Nuno F. G. Loureiro, 47, a professor at MIT, at his home in Brookline, MA.
In the videos, Neves Valente said the attacks followed long-term planning. “It was six months — not six months, six semesters,” he said. “I had already planned this for a little more.”
He refused to express regret, saying, “I am not going to apologize because during my lifetime no one sincerely apologized to me.” At another point, he dismissed public judgment altogether: “I don’t give a damn how you judge me or what you think of me.”
Neves Valente was found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound on Dec. 18 inside a New Hampshire storage unit where the videos were recorded. In what prosecutors described as some of his final remarks, he said it was time for him to leave “on my own terms” and questioned whether he had “the courage to do this to myself now.”
He also appeared to mock the victims, claiming some students could have escaped. “There is an emergency exit,” he said with a laugh, adding that those hiding “could have perfectly left through there.”
While denying any ideological motive, Neves Valente said, “I have no hatred toward America,” later adding, “I also have no love for it.” He insisted he was mentally sound, stating, “I am sane… I think the world cannot be redeemed.”
The U.S. Department of Justice said Neves Valente never clearly explained his motive. The investigation remains ongoing.
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