The discovery of the body of Claudio Manuel Neves Valente, a Portuguese national who studied physics at Brown University, earlier this week in a New Hampshire storage facility brought closure to two alarming cases. Authorities say they believe Valente, a 48-year-old who recently arrived in Boston, was behind the December 13 mass shooting at Brown University, and the December 16 murder of MIT professor Nuno Loureiro.
The identification of Valente brings calm to communities worried about a mass killer on the loose. But it also puts the lie to theories floated by right-wing influencers, including Sequoia Capital partner Shaun Maguire.
In recent days, Maguire, acting as a self-appointed digital detective, has shared posts suggesting that an entirely different man was behind the crimes—a Palestinian student at Brown University. On December 16, in a post on X that has subsequently been deleted, Maguire speculated that “it seems very likely” that the student was behind the shooting, pointing to the fact that “Brown is actively scrubbing his online presence.” In fact, the student’s digital footprints were being wiped as a protective measure against rampant, errant speculation about his link to the shootings.
“Accusations, speculation and conspiracies we’re seeing on social media and in some news reports are irresponsible, harmful, and in some cases dangerous for the safety of individuals in our community,” Brian Clark, vice president for news and strategic campus communications at Brown, told Fast Company in an emailed statement. “It is not unusual as a safety measure to take steps to protect an individual’s safety when this kind of activity happens, including in regard to their online presence.”
Clark adds: “It’s important to make clear that targeting individuals could do irrevocable harm.”
Neither Maguire, nor Sequoia, responded to interview requests for this story. Natalie Miyake, Sequoia Capital’s communications partner, was not available when Fast Company called the firm’s offices.
Still online is a subsequent post by Maguire speculating that MIT professor Loureiro was shot because he was Jewish. As evidence, Maguire points to a Google Gemini chatbot response and a Threads post criticizing Hamas. That Threads post is by a person sharing the same name as the slain man — but not actually the MIT professor.
The tenuous attempts to link an innocent man to a mass murder and a subsequent slaying follow months of inflammatory posts by the venture capitalist targeting Muslims and pro-Palestine activists. On July 4, Maguire made inflammatory comments calling New York City mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani an “Islamist”, which resulted in an open letter calling for his firing that gained more than 1,000 signatures.
Maguire subsequently partially apologized for those comments in a video. “This tweet did not land the way I thought it would,” he said. Sequoia’s then-managing partner Roelof Botha said in late October that Sequoia is a company to “celebrate diversity of opinions”, saying the firm needed “spiky” people within it, while acknowledging it can “come with trade-offs”. Maguire has previously called DEI policies within companies “structural racism.”
Maguire’s comments may have cost the company staff. In October, chief operating officer Sumaiya Balbale stepped down from Sequoia,reportedly because of the firm’s inaction over Maguire’s past comments about Muslims. (Balbale did not respond to a request for comment.) Botha himself stepped down in November.
One VC figure, who asked not to be named because of the risk of repercussions, says the inaction against Maguire speaks to broader issues about Sequoia. “If you’re a partner at KKR or Blackstone, you would have—at the very minimum—been told to stop posting stuff,” they say. “The fact it’s allowed to happen is just weird.”
The VC figure points out that if such words were used about any other minority they would be immediately condemned. “If you substitute any of this language, and you remove the word ‘Muslim’ and put ‘Jews’, or you put ‘Italians’, or you put ‘Irish’, it would definitely not pass the sniff test.”
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which previously called for Maguire’s firing over his comments about Mamdani, tells Fast Company that Sequoia should “reconsider their position on whether or not it’s appropriate for him to represent their company in any sort of way.”
“Mr. Maguire’s rush to indicate that this Muslim student who supports Palestinian human rights was likely responsible for the Brown University shooting was deeply irresponsible and incredibly dangerous,” says Edward Ahmed Mitchell, CAIR’s national deputy director. He believes that every person who “fanned the flames of bigotry against this young man without any basis or any justification should apologize and be held to account if they cross the line into illegal defamation.”
In one post earlier this month, Maguire railed against the mainstream media’s slow pace of reporting on the Brown shooting. “It’s impossible to shake the feeling that we’re not getting the truth fast enough from law enforcement and our media … when it doesn’t fit their narrative,” he wrote. Maguire’s posts imply which narrative he would have preferred as this story came to an end.