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OpenAI whistleblower Suchir Balaji was found dead at his one-bedroom apartment in San Francisco. While police declared it a suicide, his parents insist their son was murdered.
Suchir Balaji’s death has been under scrutiny as his parents and private investigators have criticised the investigation. (X/Reuters)
The mystery over ChatGPT whistleblower Suchir Balaji continues to deepen with the release of new photos from the crime scene. While authorities have declared it a suicide, Balaji’s parents have blamed OpenAI and claim their son was murdered.
Suchir Balaji died in November after he had publicly raised ethical concerns about OpenAI’s practices. The police deemed his death as an act of suicide but his family has called for an FBI investigation as they said that there were several lapses in the police probe.
However, his parents Poornima Ramarao and Balaji Ramamurthy have raised around $85,000 to pay lawyers, investigators and forensic experts to prove their son was murdered. Tesla CEO Elon Musk has also weighed in on the case, saying the allegations were “extremely concerning”.
Photos obtained by the UK-based Daily Mail showed blood pooled next to the bathroom where Suchir Balaji’s head lay, but also splattered around the bathroom far from the body, casting doubts on the suicide theory.
ALSO READ: Suchir Balaji’s Mother Claims Her Son Had ‘Documents Against OpenAI’, Elon Musk Backs Her
‘Blood Everywhere, Home Ransacked’
The crime scene photos showed one of Balaji’s wireless earbuds and two mysterious tufts of what appeared to be synthetic hair on the bloodstains at his high-end residence in San Francisco’s Buchanan Street. His home also appeared to be ransacked, “Like someone was searching for something”.
“After seeing there is so much blood everywhere, I don’t know how they think it’s a suicide, it doesn’t look close,” Balaji’s father told the Daily Mail. Since his death in November, the former OpenAI employee’s apartment has hardly been touched and never been cleaned.
UCLA pathology professor Dinesh Rao, who was hired by Balaji’s parents, wrote a preliminary report containing dozens of photos showing the condition of his one-bedroom apartment. These images show his last meal, a half-eaten ready meal with brown rice, still in the plastic tray on his cluttered desk.
NEW: Photos released of the scene where Open AI whistleblower Suchir Balaji was found deceased, family doesn’t believe he took his own life.Balaji’s parents say they believe their son was m*rdered.
Their son had worked for OpenAI and had blown the whistle on the company… pic.twitter.com/Gqond5ASR8
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 25, 2025
His kitchen table was also cluttered, some of which spilled onto the floor along with pieces of chocolate. Rao said these surroundings indicated the possibility of a fight or resistance, and urged this to be corroborated with other evidence collected from the scene.
One of Balaji’s earbuds was found on the floor near his bedroom entrance which had blood stains and hair strands on it. A large pool of dried blood was located just outside the bathroom door, along with the other earbud and a red shopping bag.
Rao slammed the police investigation as “incomplete and inadequate” that missed vital clues like the fake hair and earbuds, which he called “a very serious error”. He said the disturbing scenes from the crime site were “more likely seen in homicidal death scenes and rarely observed in alleged suicidal cases”.
Private Autopsy Showed Balaji Was Shot
Rao further said splattered blood was seen dripping down to the floor from the door and the doorframe. There were also drops of blood across the bathroom tiles, on the cabinet next to the sink and on the cabinet handle. He said some of the drops appeared to have fallen while the victim was sitting or possibly crawling, and some may have been coughed up.
More alarmingly, Balaji’s mother Poornima Ramarao said a private autopsy she paid for showed that the victim was shot from above, with the bullet entering above his nose and lodging just below the back of his skull. She said the bullet completely missed his brain and he bled for 15-30 minutes to death at the bathroom door.
Furthermore, the autopsy showed that Balaji had a second trauma wound on the side of his head. His parents have theorised that the victim was attacked from behind while he was listening to music and cleaning his teeth, and his head smashed into the wall or cabinet.
After fighting back, Balaji was likely pulled up onto his knees or sitting down, and shot in the head. As the wound wasn’t fatal, he survived for some minutes and got out of the bathroom before dying from blood loss. The deceased engineer’s father said the apartment was ransacked because the killer was looking for a storage device that had damning evidence on it.
Balaji’s gun, a Glock pistol that records show he bought on January 4, 2024, was found near his body, along with a box of 9mm ammunition in his closet with six rounds missing. One of the rounds was found in the gun case, which included the record of sale, another four elsewhere, and one unaccounted for.
Balaji’s father Ramamurthy said he was the last person to speak to the victim in a phone call on November 22. “He was happy, he didn’t show any depression. He had just returned, and in the end he said, ‘I’m going for dinner, I’ll talk to you later.’ Usually, he goes out for dinner,” said Ramamurthy.
Balaji was outspoken about the ethical and legal concerns he encountered during his tenure at OpenAI. In an interview with The New York Times shortly before his death, he claimed that the company’s AI models had been trained on copyrighted material scraped from the internet without proper authorisation.
- Location :
San Francisco, California, USA
