Brown University and MIT suspect found dead; identified as former grad student

During a news conference Thursday, authorities identified the suspect as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente and said he took his own life.

​During a news conference Thursday, authorities identified the suspect as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente and said he took his own life.   

The suspect in last weekend’s mass shooting at Brown University was identified as a 48-year-old former graduate student who had studied at the school some 25 years ago.

During a news conference Thursday, authorities identified the suspect as Claudio Manuel Neves Valente and said he took his own life.

Sources told ABC News that Valente is also believed to be the killer of an MIT professor in Brookline, Massachusetts, two days after the attack at the university.

Law enforcement sources told ABC News that the suspect in the Brown shooting was found dead inside a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, on Thursday night.

Brown University President Christina Paxson said Valente enrolled as a Ph.D student in Brown’s physics program in 2000 and withdrew a few years later. She said it was believed, as a physics student, he spent considerable time in the Barus & Holley engineering building targeted in the attack that left two students dead and wounded nine others.

He had no current affiliation with the school.

Providence Police Chief Oscar Perez said Valente was a native of Portugal with a last known address in Miami.

Police in Providence said they tracked down Valente thanks to a surveillance video and a tip about a vehicle that led to a car rental shop in Massachusetts. There police obtained a copy of the rental agreement with the suspect’s name, as well as video of the suspect that matched the videos of the person of interest seen on the Brown University campus on the day of the shooting.

Earlier Thursday, multiple sources briefed on the investigation told ABC News that the Brown shooting and the murder two days later of an MIT professor in Brookline, Massachusetts, were possibly linked.

On Saturday afternoon, two Brown students were killed and nine others were injured in a mass shooting on the Rhode Islandcampus. The gunman fled the scene and has not been publicly identified.

On Monday night, MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro, also a native of Portugal, was found shot at his home in the upscale Boston suburb of Brookline, officials said. Loureiro, 47, died on Tuesday at the hospital.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

ABC News’ Katherine Faulders and Pierre Thomas contributed to this report.