More than a decade ago, a frantic five-day manhunt for the Boston Marathon bombers highlighted several key insights: advanced surveillance technology could help catch suspects, but amateur online investigators like those on Reddit could not.
Despite several days of investigators reviewing CCTV footage and repeated appeals to the public – including the offer of a $50,000 (£37,500) reward – only Thursday saw a major breakthrough. The recent intense manhunt for the suspect in the Brown University shooting — which left two students dead and nine others injured — has challenged those earlier assumptions, according to an Associated Press report.
How is the investigation going?
Extensive surveillance systems — from doorbell and vehicle cameras to a wide network of traffic cameras — eventually helped authorities find Claudio Neves Valente, the 48-year-old former Brown student suspected in the Dec. 13 shooting and subsequent killing of an MIT professor in Brookline, Massachusetts.
However, the advanced AI-driven surveillance did not help in the initial hunt. After the shooting, the gunman slipped off Brown’s campus and blended into nearby Providence neighborhoods.
He went undetected for days by using a hard-to-trace phone, covering his face with a medical mask to avoid facial recognition, and changing license plates on his rental cars.
Read also | The Brown University shooter may have died by suicide two days before he was found
It wasn’t until a local Reddit user “untangled this case” with an old-fashioned tip first posted on the social media platform that police were able to connect the car to Neves Valente, Rhode Island Attorney General Peter Neronha said. The suspect was finally found dead Thursday in Salem, New Hampshire, days after he allegedly killed himself.
A Reddit user known only as John was hailed as “nothing less than a hero” by Providence Mayor Brett Smiley in a letter Friday to FBI Director Kash Patel, calling for John to receive the FBI’s full $50,000 reward for providing information that led to the suspect.
According to other members of the Providence forum on Reddit, strangers invited John to Christmas dinner and suggested he get “a key to the city and free coffee and donuts for life.”
Since 2013, there has been a sharp turn when commenters on Reddit and other online discussion forums falsely identified a Brown University student as a potential suspect in the deadly attack at the famous Boston Marathon, just an hour north of Providence, because of a supposed resemblance to a grainy picture of the suspect, the AP reported.
Read also | Team Trump Suspends ‘Green Card Lottery’ After Brown University, MIT Shooting
“It definitely went sideways in the Boston Marathon situation,” Liza Potts, a professor at Michigan State University and director of the Digital Humanities Lab, which researched the online response, said, according to the AP. “That’s why people will jokingly refer to the ‘Reddit Bureau of Investigations’ or the ‘Reddit Bureau of Investigations.’
The mistaken connection between the 2013 Boston Marathon bombers and the missing Brown student — who was later found dead in an apparent suicide — remains a vivid memory for many at the Ivy League school and in the surrounding community.
Brown officials this week sought to quickly quell another smear campaign circulating on X and other social media platforms that falsely linked a current Brown student to a campus shooting because of his ethnicity, perceived political views and alleged similarity to police video of a person of interest. The “unimaginable nightmare” of false allegations led to “constant death threats and hate speech,” the student said in a statement.
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, a Democrat from Rhode Island and a former state representative, frustrated that the nonsense could be inundated, urged speculators on social media to “just shut up.”
“From an investigative standpoint, there’s just no need for people who have no idea what they’re talking about offering their stupid and ill-informed opinions about what’s happened all over the Internet,” Congressman Whitehouse said Wednesday.
However, Potts said some social media do better than others, and “of all the areas I study, Reddit seems to do it more than not.”
Harmful accusations have been largely absent from Reddit’s Providence forum, in part because the volunteer moderators who manage Reddit’s topic-based forums — known as subreddits — are largely responsible for keeping the peace.
Reddit’s lead moderator for the Providence subreddit said in an interview that he’s been on the platform for about 15 years and remembers the trauma the Boston Marathon fake news caused.
“The Providence subreddit is very sensitive to (not) trying to go on a witch hunt or mob mentality,” he said on condition of anonymity to avoid doxing and because of the platform’s culture of anonymity, the AP reported.
Read also | Who is Mustapha Kharbouch? Why Brown University pulled the student profile
Providence police began reviewing footage of the familiar vehicle from dozens of AI-powered cameras located around the city that can read license plates and other identifying information about a car, such as the make, color, side damage or even bird droppings on the window.
Cameras operated by surveillance company Flock Safety recorded his vehicle at least 14 times, starting nearly two weeks before the shooting, according to a police statement. Providence police could then ask police agencies using Flock in surrounding cities and states to look for the same car, though New Hampshire — because of privacy restrictions on how long they can keep images — has none.
This image provided by the Providence Police Department shows surveillance images of Claudio Neves Valente, the suspect in the Brown University mass shooting. (Police Department via AP) (AP)
It was a breakthrough that Flock liked to brag about, especially as wariness remains in Providence’s immigrant communities about more aggressive federal immigration enforcement. Flock says each of its customers decides when to share data from the cameras, and the city does not share it with federal immigration agents. Some still want more guarantees.
Meanwhile, the BBC reported that the affidavit said he met Neves Valente in the bathroom of a technical building just hours before the attack on Brown. He became suspicious after noticing that the suspect’s clothing was “inappropriate and inappropriate for the weather.”
“John” then followed the suspect out of the building, where police said he watched him “suddenly” turn away from the Nissan when he noticed he was being followed.
“Once you find out what they are, you’re going to see them everywhere,” said Madalyn McGunagle, policy associate for the ACLU of Rhode Island. “People will notice because they look different – a solar panel on top with a little oval camera underneath.”
But unlike the doorbell cameras that spotted him walking around Providence, if Neves Valente had walked past the Flock camera, it wouldn’t have recorded him, Flock Safety CEO Garrett Langley said.
“It’s technically impossible. The camera doesn’t have the ability for the user to search for people,” Langley said in an interview Friday. “Our cameras are focused on vehicles because if you look at America, people drive. It’s very hard to get anywhere on foot.”
Read also | Trump moves to expand crackdown on immigration in 2026, despite backlash
“Most of our cities just want to know who’s coming in and who’s going out,” he said.
Still, without John the tipster — nicknamed “Reddit Guy” by local Redditors — no one would know how he left.
“Someone who’s in the area and seeing things all the time is going to be better than a random camera in a lot of ways,” said a moderator on the Providence subreddit. “John saw this guy walking around, unlocking his car and stuff, and he just thought it was a little weird.
(With inputs from Associated Press, BBC)
