\n One crucial tip, which first appeared as a comment on Reddit with details about the suspect\u2019s vehicle, provided vital information for investigators as they hunted the man they say opened fire at Brown\u2019s engineering building before gunning down a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor<\/a> at his home days later. The Reddit comment helped officers narrow in on the suspect\u2019s rental vehicle, which they traced to a Salem, New Hampshire, storage facility where he was found dead.\n <\/p>\n \n For Providence Mayor Brett Smiley, the tip \u2013 which was cited in an affidavit and arrest warrant for the shooter, Claudio Manuel Neves Valente \u2013 was so important that the tipster deserves all of the $50,000. He argued as much in a letter addressed to FBI Director Kash Patel.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cJohn is no less than a hero,\u201d Smiley said in the letter, which his office shared with CNN. \u201cHis bravery, selflessness and stewardship on behalf of his community went far beyond what anyone could ever hope from a tip.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n There\u2019s just one hiccup: Because Valente, a Portuguese national who briefly studied at Brown\u2019s physics department<\/a> more than 20 years ago but never completed his degree, was found dead, there will never be an arrest and conviction, which the FBI specified in offering the reward.\n <\/p>\n \n It\u2019s unclear how the FBI might respond to the mayor\u2019s request. A spokesperson for the bureau told CNN \u201cthe FBI will not comment on whether reward money has been paid and to whom\u201d for \u201cprivacy protection, and to ensure the public\u2019s continued cooperation and incentivization with any future assistance.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n Smiley was resolute in his letter. \u201cI believe that our community is breathing easier today because of the extraordinary assistance John provided to our law enforcement agencies,\u201d he wrote. \u201cI am writing to you today to request that the entirety of the $50,000 reward be issued to this incredible Providence neighbor.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n John\u2019s comment on Reddit was one of countless made in communities dedicated to Providence and true crime generally, as users discussed the extended manhunt and the baffling set of crimes that disturbed the close-knit academic communities<\/a> at Brown and MIT.\n <\/p>\n \n But John wasn\u2019t just speculating about the shooting. He said he had seen the suspect, who was shown in photos and videos from authorities, opening and backing away from a gray Nissan parked near the gates of the Rhode Island Historical Society.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cI\u2019m being dead serious,\u201d the post, quoted in the affidavit for Valente\u2019s arrest, reads. \u201cThe police need to look into a grey Nissan with Florida plates, possibly a rental. That was the car he was driving.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n A tip about the Reddit post led police to identify a \u201cgrey\/blue Nissan sedan\u201d in surveillance videos.\n <\/p>\n \n John\u2019s help went beyond just the Reddit post.\n <\/p>\n \n Four days after the shooting at Brown\u2019s engineering building, police released photos of the suspect interacting with an unknown person, and they urged that person to come forward with any information about the suspect.\n <\/p>\n \n That evening, a man approached Providence police officers on Brown\u2019s campus. He was the man featured in the photos, he told them, and he was the Reddit poster.\n <\/p>\n \n John \u2013 whose full identity is known to police, according to the affidavit \u2013 accompanied police to the station for an interview. He described his encounters with the suspect, whom he said he saw inside the Barus and Holley engineering building the day of the shooting, and helped identify surveillance images of the suspect and his vehicle.\n <\/p>\n \n While giving his statement to police, officers showed the tipster more images of the car they were seeking.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cHoly sh*t, that might be it,\u201d John told them, the affidavit says.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cIt was really a critical turning point, and this was an individual who stepped up and stepped forward for all the right reasons,\u201d Smiley told<\/a> CNN\u2019s Kate Bolduan on Friday, \u201cprobably with legitimate fear for what that might mean for his safety, but he did it for all the right reasons.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n John \u201cblew this case right open,\u201d Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said at a Thursday night news conference. \u201cHe blew it open.\u201d\n <\/p>\n \n The rental car\u2019s original license plate, seen on surveillance video, helped police trace its origin to an Alamo Rent a Car in downtown Boston, according to the Providence Police affidavit.\n <\/p>\n \n The company told them the renter\u2019s name: Claudio Manuel Neves Valente.<\/a>\n <\/p>\n \n But officials did not initially release that name, Neronha later said, because they hoped to catch up to Valente when he returned the car.\n <\/p>\n \n \u201cWe wanted to try to take him without him knowing we were coming,\u201d the attorney general said<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n Valente never returned the vehicle, but investigators found the Nissan Sentra abandoned near the New Hampshire storage building where he\u2019d rented a unit in November, and where investigators say he\u2019d been spotted wearing the same clothes the suspect wore after the killing of esteemed MIT professor Nuno Loureiro. The two men attended the same academic program in Portugal from 1995 to 2000.\n <\/p>\n \n On December 18, five days after the Brown shooting, officers swarmed the facility and found Neves Valente dead inside an unoccupied unit next to the one he had rented. He had killed himself, said Providence Police Chief Col. Oscar Perez Jr. He is believed to have died December 16.\n <\/p>\n \n The discovery brought an end to a winding, multistate manhunt<\/a> that saw one person briefly detained<\/a> before being released and cleared. Still, much about the shooting and Valente remains unclear<\/a>. Why did he target the university, where he\u2019d spent only a few months more than 20 years ago, and the professor? How did he spend the decades since withdrawing from Brown? And why did he take his own life?\n <\/p>\n \n Another unanswered question: whether John, or someone else, will receive any of the $50,000 reward money.\n <\/p>\n \n There has been at least one case when authorities distributed tip money even when a suspect was found dead.\n <\/p>\n \n After former Los Angeles police officer Christopher Dorner<\/a>, who had an anti-police vendetta and killed four people, was found dead in a vacant mountain cabin after a shootout with police, around a dozen parties claimed they had provided the key tip that led authorities to the suspect, according to The Associated Press.<\/a> Eventually, a panel of judges decided most of the $1 million reward money would go to a couple whom he held at gunpoint and tied up in their Southern California cabin before stealing their vehicle to escape. One of the two, Karen Reynolds, called police, identifying Dorner and giving the location of their cabin and a description of the vehicle.\n <\/p>\n \n In other high-profile cases, it\u2019s unclear whether anyone has ever received the reward money.\n <\/p>\n \n Authorities said last year they were still determining who would get some of the $60,000 in rewards offered by the FBI and Crime Stoppers for the capture of the person who shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in New York, according to the AP<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n \n Some 400 people submitted tips during the five-day search, and around 30 of them proved helpful for the New York Police Department in tracking the shooter\u2019s movements before and after the killing, the NYPD told the AP.\n <\/p>\n \n In the end, it was a 911 call <\/a>from a McDonald\u2019s employee in Altoona, Pennsylvania, that led police to find and arrest Luigi Mangione<\/a>, who has pleaded not guilty to all federal charges against him.\n <\/p>\n \n The FBI reward requires a conviction, so the tipster likely isn\u2019t yet eligible for that money. But the Police Foundation board has said the 911 caller is eligible for the $3,500 Crime Stoppers portion, which could go to that caller or be divided among a number of tipsters, according to the AP.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"His detailed tip helped lead investigators to the gunman behind the deadly Brown University shooting \u2013 but whether…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":363512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[23,3,21,19,22,20,25,24],"class_list":["post-363511","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-america","tag-news","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=363511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/363511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/363512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=363511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=363511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=363511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Claudio](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/12\/2025-12-19t035437z-314778922-rc2ajiaixhjj-rtrmadp-3-usa-shooting-brown.jpg\")
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