Death of an Open A.I. Whistleblower

Suchir Balaji was trying to warn the world of the dangers of Open A.I. when he was found dead in his apartment. His story suggests that San Francisco has become an open sewer of corruption.

According to Wikipedia:

Suchir Balaji (1998 – November 26, 2024) was an artificial intelligence researcher and former employee of OpenAI, where he worked from 2020 until 2024. He gained attention for his whistleblowing activities related to artificial intelligence ethics and the inner workings of OpenAI.

Balaji was found dead in his home on November 26, 2024. San Francisco authorities determined the death was a suicide, though Balaji's parents have disputed the verdict.

Balaji’s mother just gave an extraordinary interview with Tucker Carlson that is well worth watching.

If her narrative is indeed accurate, it indicates that someone has induced key decision makers within the San Francisco Police and Medical Examiner’s Office to turn a blind eye to the obvious indications that Balaji was murdered. Based on the story that his mother told Tucker Carlson, the key corrupt figure in the medical examiner’s office is David Serrano Sewell—Executive Director of the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner.

A quick Google search of Mr. Serrano Sewell resulted in a Feb. 8, 2024 report in the San Francisco Standard headlined San Francisco official likely tossed out human skull, lawsuit says. According to the report:

The disappearance of a human skull has spurred a lawsuit against the top administrator of San Francisco’s medical examiner’s office from an employee who alleges she faced retaliation for reporting the missing body part.

Sonia Kominek-Adachi alleges in a lawsuit filed Monday that she was terminated from her job as a death investigator after finding that the executive director of the office, David Serrano Sewell, may have “inexplicably” tossed the skull while rushing to clean up the office ahead of an inspection.

Kominek-Adachi made the discovery in January 2023 while doing an inventory of body parts held by the office, her lawsuit says. Her efforts to raise an alarm around the missing skull allegedly led up to her firing last October.

If the allegations of this lawsuit are true, they suggest that Mr. Serrano Sewell is an unscrupulous and vindictive man. According to the SF Gov website:

Serrano Sewell joined the OCME with over 16 years of experience developing management structures, building consensus, and achieving policy improvements in the public, nonprofit, and private sectors. He previously served as a Mayor’s aide, Deputy City Attorney, and a policy advocate for public and nonprofit hospitals.

In other words, he is an old denizen of the San Francisco city machine. If a mafia-like organization has penetrated the city administration, it would be well-served by having a key player run the medical examiner’s office.

According to Balaji’s mother, Poornima Ramarao, his death was an obvious murder that was crudely staged to look like a suicide. The responding police officers only spent forty minutes examining the scene, and then left the body in the apartment to be retrieved by medical examiner field agents the next day. If true, this was an act of breathtaking negligence.

I have written a book about two murders that were staged to look like suicides, and to me, Mrs. Ramarao’s story sounds highly credible. Balaji kept a pistol in his apartment for self defense because he felt that his life was possibly in danger. He was found shot in the head with this pistol, which was purportedly found in his hand. If his death was indeed a murder staged to look like a suicide, it raises the suspicion that the assailant knew that Balaji possessed this pistol and where he kept it in his apartment.

Balaji was found with a gunshot wound to his head—fired from above, the bullet apparently traversing downward through his face and missing his brain. However, he had also sustained what—based on his mother’s testimony—sounds like a blunt force injury on the left side of the head, suggesting a right-handed assailant initially struck him with a blunt instrument that may have knocked him unconscious or stunned him. The gunshot was apparently inflicted after the attack with the blunt instrument.

A fragment of a bloodstained wig found in the apartment suggests the assailant wore a whig in order to disguise himself in the event he was caught in a surveillance camera placed in the building’s main entrance. No surveillance camera was positioned over the entrance to Balaji’s apartment.

How did the assailant enter Balaji’s apartment? Did Balaji know the assailant and let him in? Alternatively, did the assailant somehow—perhaps through a contact in the building’s management—obtain a key to the apartment?

All of these questions could probably be easily answered with a proper investigation, but it sounds like the responding officers hastily concluded it was a suicide, and the medical examiner’s office hastily confirmed their initial perception. If good crime scene photographs could be obtained, a decent bloodstain pattern analyst could probably reconstruct what happened to Balaji.

Vernon J. Geberth, a retired Lieutenant-Commander of the New York City Police Department, has written extensively about how homicides are often erroneously perceived to be suicides by responding officers. The initial perception of suicide at a death scene often results in a lack of proper analysis. His essay The Seven Major Mistakes in Suicide Investigation should be required reading for every police officer whose job includes examining the scenes of unattended deaths.

However, judging by his mother’s testimony, Suchir Balaji’s death was obviously a murder staged to look like a suicide. Someone in a position of power decided it was best to perform only the most cursory investigation and to rule the manner of death suicide based on the mere fact that the pistol was purportedly found in the victim’s hand.

Readers who are interested in learning more about this kind of crime will find it interesting to watch my documentary film in which I examine two murders that were staged to look like suicides. Incidentally, the film is now showing in the Hollywood North International Film Festival. Please click on the image below to watch the film.

If you don’t have a full forty minutes to spare to watch the entire picture, please consider devoting just one second of your time to click on the vote button. Many thanks!