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A Hillsborough County judge ordered Hisham Abugharbieh held without bond on Tuesday in the case charging him with the killings of two University of South Florida doctoral students from Bangladesh, a development that came just days after a SWAT team arrested him at his parents’ home. At a brief hearing in Tampa, Hillsborough County Judge Logan Murphy also restricted Abugharbieh from having any contact with witnesses or the victims’ relatives.
During the hearing, Murphy ordered the no-bond pretrial detention and the contact prohibition as part of the court conditions tied to the allegations. Abugharbieh was not present in the courtroom, and a public defender, Jennifer Spradley, said Monday that her office would not comment.
Abugharbieh faces two counts of first-degree murder with a weapon, along with additional charges, according to state court records described by prosecutors. The AP report said the death penalty is possible if he is convicted, though prosecutors have not indicated whether they will seek capital punishment.
The case involves the disappearance of Zamil Limon and Nahida Bristy, both 27-year-old doctoral students from Bangladesh. Prosecutors said the students were last seen after they disappeared April 16, and investigators later connected Abugharbieh to the locations tied to the missing students through investigative tracking and evidence found in their shared housing.
Investigators used cellphone location and license plate reader data, the report said, to track Abugharbieh’s car and Limon’s phone to the bridge where Limon’s body was found Friday morning. Prosecutors said Limon had numerous stab wounds and appeared to be bound, based on a report filed by prosecutors.
Detectives continued searching for Bristy after Limon was found. On Sunday, the sheriff’s office announced that a body had been found in a waterway near the bridge, and said it had not been identified; the medical examiner’s office later said Tuesday that autopsy reports for the body were still pending, while prosecutors added new charges related to Bristy’s case Monday.
Based on the charges, the AP report said Bristy is presumed dead. Prosecutors added allegations including tampering with physical evidence, failure to report a death and unlawfully holding or moving a dead body, according to the report.
The AP account also described statements and evidence that investigators said emerged as the case progressed. When detectives questioned Abugharbieh and another roommate after the couple went missing, investigators noticed Abugharbieh’s pinky finger was bandaged, and the AP report said he denied involvement in Limon’s disappearance, according to the prosecution’s pretrial detention report.
In interviews described by prosecutors, Abugharbieh’s mother, Haya Abugharbieh, said her son struggled to manage his anger and had been violent to family members in the past. An apartment manager provided investigators access to the apartment and to Limon’s locked bedroom, and the AP report said a third roommate told detectives that Abugharbieh had used a cart overnight on April 16 to move cardboard boxes from his room to the trash compactor, where detectives found Limon’s wallet and campus ID badge, as well as a credit card, eyeglasses and clothes that appeared to have blood on them.
Prosecutors also said that after detectives returned with a search warrant, they found blood residue leading from the kitchen to Abugharbieh’s bedroom and more blood that soaked his bedroom carpet. In Limon’s bedroom, investigators found Bristy’s campus ID and credit cards, according to the AP report.
The report also described an inquiry by Florida’s attorney general that broadened from an earlier case involving advice allegedly linked to artificial intelligence. Days before Limon and Bristy disappeared, Abugharbieh had asked OpenAI’s ChatGPT what would happen if a human body was put in a garbage bag and thrown in a dumpster, prosecutors said, adding that the chatbot’s response sounded dangerous.
Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said Monday on social media that an investigation his office launched last week into whether ChatGPT offered advice to the suspect accused in a Florida State University killing will expand to include the USF students’ case. OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said Tuesday that the company was looking into the reports on Abugharbieh and would support law enforcement as needed, and in an email said, “This is a terrible crime, and our thoughts are with everyone affected.”