Margaux Whittemore

The claim is not a legal allegation against OpenAI — no party has sued and no prosecutor alleged AI involvement. It originates from expert testimony at the 16 October 2025 not-criminally-responsible hearing in Kennebec County Superior Court. Dr. Melissa Jankowski of the Maine State Forensic Service testified that Samuel Whittemore, 34, told her he had been using ChatGPT up to 14 hours a day, treating it as a companion that told him he was 'smart, special and doing OK'. Reporting on that testimony (Bangor Daily News, Central Maine) characterised the heavy use as appearing to have helped push him toward mental instability. Dr. April O'Grady, testifying for the defence, said Whittemore believed the world was being populated by machines and that robots were taking over the earth; the Bangor Daily News reported he believed his wife had become part machine.

The official record here is unusually strong on the killing and the defendant's mental state, and silent on the chatbot's causal role. Established by court proceedings and contemporaneous police-sourced reporting: on 19 February 2025 at about 10:02 a.m., a 911 call brought Maine State Police and Winthrop police to a Giles Road home in Readfield — the home of Whittemore's parents. Margaux Whittemore, 32, an international marketing consultant with family in France, was killed with a fire poker. His mother, Dorothy 'Darcy' Whittemore, was gravely injured (broken clavicle, fractured ribs and fingers) and was initially hospitalised in critical condition. Whittemore fled and was apprehended nearby; officers reportedly found him unclothed in the road allegedly saying 'I killed my wife'.

An autopsy was performed and the death was ruled homicidal before the murder charge was filed; Central Maine reported the cause as sharp and blunt force injuries. A Kennebec County grand jury indicted him on 19 March 2025 for intentional or knowing / depraved indifference murder, aggravated attempted murder, and aggravated assault. Judge Daniel Mitchell ordered a competency evaluation on 21 February 2025; he was found incompetent to stand trial and committed for treatment in April 2025. On 16 October 2025, Justice Michaela Murphy found him not criminally responsible and committed him to Maine DHHS custody at Riverview or Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Hospital until he no longer poses a danger — over the objection of Margaux Whittemore's family, some of whom travelled from France.

The official finding is one of mental disease or defect: bipolar 1 disorder with psychotic features, in a manic episode reaching psychosis, per Dr. Jankowski. ChatGPT enters the record only as a self-reported behavioural detail inside that psychiatric testimony. No court finding, no prosecution filing, and no police conclusion attributes any causal role to ChatGPT.

Official findings: Cause of death: sharp and blunt force injuries (fire poker); autopsy performed by the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and death ruled homicidal before charges were filed. Manner: homicide. Investigating agencies: Maine State Police (lead) with Winthrop Police Department; prosecuted by the State of Maine. Court findings: indicted 19 March 2025 (Kennebec County grand jury); found incompetent to stand trial April 2025; found NOT CRIMINALLY RESPONSIBLE by Justice Michaela Murphy on 16 October 2025 on the basis of bipolar 1 disorder with psychotic features producing a manic episode with psychosis, and committed to Maine DHHS custody. No official finding of any kind references ChatGPT as a cause; the only judicial-record mention of ChatGPT is within forensic-psychology testimony describing the defendant's self-reported daily usage.

Model: ChatGPT, version not established. Forensic psychologist Dr. Melissa Jankowski testified that Whittemore told her he used ChatGPT up to 14 hours a day and treated it as a companion. No source identifies the model build, and no source quotes any specific ChatGPT output.

Research notes (2026-08-24): Searched (2026-08-24) for: the Bangor Daily News original; Central Maine / Kennebec Journal coverage across February, April and October 2025; WGME, WABI, Fox Bangor, NEWS CENTER Maine; 'Kennebec County Superior Court docket Whittemore'; Maine Judicial Branch record portals; Wikipedia's 'Deaths linked to chatbots'. Could NOT find: a public docket number (Maine's trial-court records are not freely searchable online), the indictment or NCR order as a PDF, the Maine State Police affidavit, or the medical examiner's report. The Bangor Daily News article itself was unfetchable (302 redirect to a paywall/CIPA host), so its ChatGPT detail is sourced here via the Central Maine report of the same hearing, the Wikipedia citation, and search snippets. DATE DISCREPANCY RESOLVED: the Bangor Daily News says the attack was 'Feb. 18'; the contemporaneous Central Maine report of 21 February 2025 places the 911 call at approximately 10:02 a.m. on Wednesday 19 February 2025, and Wikipedia's entry also uses 19 February. I have used 2025-02-19 and flag the BDN reference as the outlier. Doubt to flag for review: transcript_status is 'none' in the strict sense — no ChatGPT content whatsoever is in the public record for this case, only testimony about how many hours he used it.

OpenAI is not a party and has issued no statement on this case that I could locate. The court's actual finding — incapacity from bipolar 1 disorder with psychotic features — is a complete alternative explanation that the state's own forensic psychologist advanced and the judge accepted. The delusional content (robots populating the world, his wife having become part machine) is a recognisable psychotic theme and is not shown to have originated in any ChatGPT output.

The evidentiary gap is total on the AI side. No chat logs were quoted in reporting, entered as exhibits, or described as recovered. There is no public record of any conversation in which the model reinforced a delusion, encouraged violence, or gave operational assistance. The '14 hours a day' figure is Whittemore's own account to an evaluator during a psychotic-illness assessment, not a device forensic finding. Heavy use during a manic episode is at least as consistent with the illness driving the usage as with the usage driving the illness, and the reporting's framing that ChatGPT 'appeared to have helped push him toward mental instability' is a characterisation of testimony rather than a court finding.