A gunman who fatally shot two Brown University students before killing a professor in another state planned the attack for months and expressed no remorse, according to details of confessional-style videos released by investigators.
Transcripts of the clips recorded by Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, 48, show him saying he spent “six semesters” planning the attack in Providence, Rhode Island, on 13 December.
The Portuguese immigrant defended his actions, but did not indicate any motive, according to the transcripts.
Two days later, MIT professor Nuno Loureiro was fatally shot in his home near Boston by the gunman, who later took his own life.
The classroom attack, which killed students Ella Cook, 19, and Mukhammad Aziz Umurzokov, 18, and injured nine others, shocked the country and led to criticism over how long it took police to identify a suspect.
The videos were discovered in a New Hampshire storage unit along with the attacker’s body on 18 December after a manhunt spanning three US states.
In the footage, he spoke in his native Portuguese, said the US justice department.
English translations of the transcripts were released by the US Attorney for the District of Massachusetts on Tuesday.
“Although Neves Valente stated that Brown University was his intended target, based on initial review of the evidence collected, he did not provide a motive for targeting students at Brown University or the professor at MIT,” the prosecutor’s office said in a news release.
“Neves Valente showed no remorse during the recordings; on the contrary, he exposed his true nature when he blamed innocent, unarmed children for their deaths at his hand and grumbled about a self-inflicted injury he suffered when he shot the MIT professor at close range.”
In the transcripts, the gunman complained that a discharged bullet casing hit him in the eye.
Investigators said the suspect had attended the same university in Portugal as the MIT professor, and they were thought to have known each other.
He spoke about being confronted by a witness during the campus attack, adding: “I honestly never thought it would take them so long to find me.”
A former Brown University student, he denied in his videos having a mental illness, and said the attack was not motivated by ill will towards the US.
“I have no hatred towards America,” he said, though he called his decision to come to the US a “mistake”.
In their statement, prosecutors vowed that the investigation would continue, but there was no ongoing threat to the public.
