| Murder of Suzanne Adams | |
|---|---|
| Location | Greenwich, Connecticut, U.S. |
| Date | August 5, 2025 |
| Target | Suzanne Eberson Adams |
Attack type | Matricide, Murder-suicide, Murder by Blunt force trauma |
| Deaths | 2 (Adams and the perpetrator) |
| Perpetrator | Stein-Erik Soelberg |
| Motive | Persecutory delusion |
On August 5, 2025, 83-year-old Suzanne Eberson Adams was murdered at her home in Greenwich, Connecticut by her son and former Yahoo executive, 56-year-old Stein-Erik Soelberg. Shortly after killing his mother, Soelberg committed suicide.
Adams's murder was fueled by her son's delusions that she was a Chinese intelligence asset. Shortly after an investigation into the murder-suicide, it was revealed that Soelberg had apparently conversed with ChatGPT, an artificial intelligence chatbot, about his suspicions. Despite the unlikely nature of his accusations toward her, the chatbot apparently agreed that his fears were justified and prompted Soelberg to test his mother to determine if she was a spy or not. In their last chats together, the chatbot allegedly told Soelberg that they would reunite in the afterlife.
OpenAI, who developed the chatbot, denied that the chatbot was liable for the killing and insisted that the chats between the perpetrator and ChatGPT played no role in the murder. According to OpenAI, ChatGPT repeatedly recommended for Soelberg to seek external help with a therapist, which he did not follow up on. Critics, however, claimed that the chatbot created an echo chamber that fed into the perpetrator's delusions.
On August 5, 2025, Greenwich police discovered the bodies of Suzanne Adams and Stein-Erik Soelberg during a welfare check at their home. Medical examiners ruled Adams' death a homicide and said she died from "blunt injury of head with neck compression". Soelberg's death was ruled a suicide with the cause of death being "sharp force injuries of neck and chest". [1]
Later that month, police revealed that the perpetrator had befriended ChatGPT and utilized it to corroborate his delusions regarding his mother. The usage of an AI chatbot to worsen delusions is known as chatbot psychosis. The New York Post , Wall Street Journal , and Fox News reported the link between the two, and speculated that the chatbot may have been largely responsible for the death. The Economic Times reported the death as the "first time" an AI chatbot convinced a person to commit murder. [2] At one point, the chatbot even claimed that his mother may have been a demon. [3] OpenAI denied this, and claims that ChatGPT encouraged Soelberg to seek professional mental health. The chatbot told Soelberg he was "not crazy" to think that his mother had tried to poison him with psychedelic drugs in his car's air vents; in another instance, it told Soelberg that symbols on a receipt from a Chinese restaurant related to his mother and a demon. In their final chats together, the chatbot suggested that the two would meet again in the afterlife after Soelberg passes away. [4]