ChatGPT just helped a man put a body in a trash bag.
Now the company's executives are staring down a criminal investigation.
Florida's Attorney General just connected two murder cases to the same AI chatbot – and the body count is finally making someone answer for it.
ChatGPT Coached a Suspected Killer for Three Days
The messages are extraordinary.
In the days before two doctoral students disappeared from the University of South Florida, the man charged with killing them was typing questions into ChatGPT.
He asked how to put a human in a trash bag.
https://twitter.com/CBSMiami/status/2048702862767648949?s=20
He asked whether a person could survive a sniper bullet to the head.
He asked if a car's vehicle identification number can be changed.
He asked whether cars are checked at a state park in the early morning hours.
He asked whether his neighbors would hear his gun.
Those aren't hypothetical questions. Those are a checklist.
Hisham Abugharbieh – the 26-year-old charged with murdering his two roommates, Zimal Limon and Nahida Bristy – didn't just go to ChatGPT once.
The conversations spanned three days leading up to the disappearances and continued until hours before Limon's body was found.
Limon's body turned up in a trash bag on the Howard Franklin Bridge on April 24.
Human remains believed to be Bristy were recovered from a Tampa waterway on April 27.
The Second Case in Six Days
This isn't the first time Florida's AG has linked ChatGPT to a mass casualty event.
Six days ago, Attorney General James Uthmeier subpoenaed OpenAI over its role in the Florida State University mass shooting last April.
The morning of that attack, accused shooter Phoenix Ikner used ChatGPT to ask how to fire his guns, learn the busiest times on campus, and calculate how many victims he needed to kill to make national headlines.
https://twitter.com/AGJamesUthmeier/status/2048771186050429216?s=20
Same company. Same chatbot. Different body count.
Uthmeier announced Monday he's expanding the criminal investigation to include the USF murders.
"We are expanding our criminal investigation into OpenAI to include the USF murders after learning the primary suspect used ChatGPT," Uthmeier wrote on social media.
His office is now weighing whether to subpoena OpenAI directly in the Tampa case – as it did with the FSU shooting – or embed itself in the Hillsborough County prosecution.
OpenAI Has a Body Count Problem
This investigation is the first of its kind in the country.
Nobody has ever tried to hold an AI company's executives or program designers criminally accountable for what their software helps users do.
OpenAI has spent years insisting its models have robust safety guardrails.
Two Florida murder cases suggest those guardrails have a gap you could drive a truck through.
The FSU shooter asked ChatGPT how many people he needed to kill for national media coverage.
ChatGPT answered.
The USF murder suspect asked ChatGPT how to dispose of a human body.
ChatGPT answered.
https://twitter.com/AGJamesUthmeier/status/2048826264610291849?s=20
Sam Altman built a product that coaches killers.
Florida is the first state with the backbone to say that out loud – and do something about it.
Meanwhile, Florida lawmakers are meeting this week to debate mandatory AI guardrails across the state – including a ban on companion chatbots for minors and requirements that bots repeatedly remind users they aren't human.
The people who built ChatGPT had years to put those guardrails in place themselves.
They didn't.
A family in Bangladesh just found out their daughters aren't coming home.
And while Silicon Valley executives collect speaking fees and talk about the future of humanity, James Uthmeier is the first prosecutor in America who looked at all of that and decided enough.
Sources:
- Liv Caputo, "Uthmeier expands criminal AI investigation to USF murders," Florida Phoenix, April 27, 2026.
- Liv Caputo, "Uthmeier investigating whether ChatGPT is criminally liable for FSU shooting," Florida Phoenix, April 21, 2026.
- Liv Caputo, "Alleged FSU shooter consulted ChatGPT on when to attack, sexual scenarios with a minor," Florida Phoenix, April 15, 2026.
- Tampa Bay Times, "USF murder case missing students," Tampa Bay Times, April 26, 2026.
