The Maine license plate that was allegedly attached to a rental car used in a triple homicide remains as mysterious as the entire case.
The FBI says the plate was used by Claudio Manuel Neves Valente to try to evade police following three murders earlier this month – of two students in Providence, Rhode Island and of a college professor in Brookline, Massachusetts.
It’s unclear where and how Neves Valente got the unregistered Maine license plate, which has not been active for more than a decade, U.S. Attorney for the District of Massachusetts Leah Foley said.
The plate had not been registered since 2011.
Neves Valente, 48, who had traveled to New England last month, apparently from his Miami home, is suspected in the murders of two Brown University students and an MIT professor.
The alleged killer’s body was found December 18 in a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, police said.
Neves Valente’s suspected killing spree began in Providence then moved to Brookline.
From there he apparently traveled to Salem, New Hampshire, where he apparently took his own life.
The burning question is where he allegedly got his hands on an old, 14-year-old Maine license plate, as well as whether he had Maine connections.
Was he headed to Maine after New Hampshire?
Police say there was no indication that Neves Valente had ever been to Maine.
The old plate was attached to the rear bumper of the rental vehicle.
The mystery of the Maine plate is as baffling as the reasons for the suspect’s alleged killing binge, which took him from southern New England to the northern part of the region.
Maine State Police told WMTW-TV that, at the request of an out-of-state law enforcement agency, they reviewed the history of the license plate in question.
Maine police officials say the person to whom it was originally registered to has no connection to this case.
The motive for the suspect’s alleged murderous tirade remains murky, though his ex-classmates say he had a beef with Brown and may have been jealous of the MIT professor.
While at Brown more than 25 years ago briefly as a grad student, he reportedly complained that the courses were too easy and that the food sucked.
He also may have been envious of Nuno FG Loureiro, the MIT professor and former Portuguese college physics classmate who excelled professionally while Neves Valente was fired as a teaching assistant from that same school, former colleagues say.
Loureiro also reportedly visited the Brown campus while Neves Valente was there but it is unknown whether they knew or befriended each other at the time.
Investigators believe Valente drove a rented Nissan to Brookline days after the Brown University shooting.
Wearing a reflective vest, he rang Loureiro’s doorbell.
When the professor answered with his 12-year-old child nearby, Valente allegedly shot him point-blank in the face, then fled to New Hampshire and killed himself, according to Foley.
