How ChatGPT prompts and a lighter led Palisades Fire investigators to a suspected arsonist
Just before midnight on New Year’s Eve, Jonathan Rinderknecht finished up a stint as an Uber driver and drove to a hiking area just north of Pacific Palisades, California. It was a familiar place for the 29-year-old – not far from where he had previously lived, according to a federal investigator who provided the following account of his movements that night in court documents. Rinderknecht got out of his car and hiked up the trail, past a sign stating “Danger” and “No Fires/Smoking,” toward a small clearing sometimes called the “Hidden Buddha” for a hollowed out stump where people placed Buddha figurines. At 11:47 p.m., he took out his iPhone and captured a 360-degree video of the area.
Seven minutes later he played the song “Un Zder, Un Thé” by the French rapper Josman, about despair and bitterness. There, by himself, with the world stretched out below, Rinderknecht entered into the New Year. At 12:12:01 a.m., a camera just under 5 miles away captured the first indication of a fire near that location, according to the court documents. That blaze soon developed into the Lachman Fire, which grew to eight acres before firefighters were able to knock it down on New Year’s Day. But the fire continued smoldering underground, and on the windy morning of January 7, it started up again.
That “holdover” fire rapidly grew into the Palisades Fire that swept through Pacific Palisades, destroying thousands of homes and businesses and killing 12 people, making it one of the most damaging wildfires in the region’s history. What exactly happened at the top of that hill as 2024 turned to 2025 is now the subject of a federal arson case against Rinderknecht. Investigators have determined the cause of the fire was an open flame, “likely a lighter,” to a combustible material like vegetation or paper, according to an affidavit in support of a criminal complaint filed this week.
The affidavit, signed by an ATF special agent who is a certified fire investigator, accuses Rinderknecht of “maliciously” setting the fire just after midnight. At a news conference Wednesday, officials with the US Attorney’s Office and the ATF declined to speak to the suspect’s motive. “I wish we could get into somebody’s head, but we can’t,” said Special Agent in Charge Kenny Cooper of the ATF’s Los Angeles Field Division. “People do evil things for whatever reason, and I’m not going to speculate or go into anything of that.” Rinderknecht appeared in federal court in Orlando, where he is based, on Wednesday afternoon, and he did not enter a plea.
A judge denied him bail in a hearing Thursday on concerns he was a flight risk, according to CNN affiliate WFTV. Federal Assistant Public Defender Aziza Hawthorne said Rinderknecht was not a flight risk, adding “he is not a risk to anyone,” according to The Associated Press. If convicted, he faces a minimum of five years and a maximum of 20 years in prison. Rinderknecht’s attorney Steve Haney issued a statement saying he looked forward to “vigorously defending” his client. “There were blatant failures by Governmental agencies that were intervening causes between the Lachman and the Palisades Fires,” he said.
“To scapegoat Jonathan Rinderknecht and attempt to hold him criminally liable for the failure of others is preposterous.” An examination of the 26-page affidavit reveals some of the gritty details of the eight-plus months of investigation that led to his arrest. There were high-tech methods: GPS data, fire-sensing cameras, DNA analysis and ChatGPT logs. There were decidedly low-tech methods: Closely watching his pulsing carotid artery during an interview, talking to hundreds of witnesses and meticulously sifting through the charred remains of the fire for clues.
“Part of the lengthy time that it took to go over the thousands of acres that were burned is we literally had agents with our partners on their hands and knees crawling through fire debris,” Cooper said at the news conference. Here’s a closer look at Rinderknecht’s alleged actions on the night of the fire and the extensive efforts to investigate its cause that led to his arrest. Fiery prompts to ChatGPT Months before the fire, Rinderknecht had sent curious prompts to ChatGPT, the artificial intelligence app, according to the affidavit. In July, he asked ChatGPT to produce a “dystopian painting” with three distinct parts, the affidavit says. “On the far left, there is a burning forest.
Next to it, a crowd of people is running away from the fire,” he wrote. “In the middle, hundreds of thousands of people in poverty are trying to get past a gigantic gate with a big dollar sign on it. On the other side of the gate and the entire wall is a conglomerate of the richest people. They are chilling, watching the world burn down, and watching the people struggle.” The app spat out this image, according to prosecutors: Then in November, Rinderknecht wrote a prompt to ChatGPT saying he was 28 years old and mentioning a fiery event months prior, according to the affidavit. “I literally burnt the Bible that I had. It felt amazing. I felt so liberated,” he wrote.
The fire and the immediate aftermath On New Year’s Eve, Rinderknecht appeared “agitated and angry,” two Uber passengers later told investigators. He dropped off a passenger at 11:34 p.m. and then went on up to the trailhead toward the Hidden Buddha area for the New Year, the affidavit says. In an email, Uber said Rinderknecht passed his initial background check in 2023. The company said it worked closely with the ATF to help determine his whereabouts on and around the New Year and provided the ATF with GPS data and other information. Uber said it removed his access to the platform after learning of his suspected involvement in the fire.
Video footage and “Timing Advance” data from cell service providers showed he was the only person in the Hidden Buddha area that night, according to the affidavit. The first indication of a fire came at 12:12:01 a.m. from the camera about 4.7 miles away that was set up to detect wildfires, the affidavit says. Another camera just .2 miles from the Hidden Buddha area detected the glow of a fire at 12:12:21 a.m., the document states. At 12:12:31 a.m. and 12:12:50, Rinderknecht repeatedly tried to call 911, but the calls did not go through, according to cellphone data. GPS data of those calls shows him in and around the Hidden Buddha area, according to the affidavit.
After several more failed attempts, his 911 call finally connected at 12:17 a.m. and he reported the presence of a fire, the affidavit states. During that call, he went to his ChatGPT app and asked a question: “Are you at fault if a fire is lift [sic] because of your cigarettes,” according to the affidavit. He made a screen-recording on his iPhone of several attempted 911 calls and his question to ChatGPT, the affidavit states. That action “indicates that Rinderknecht wanted to preserve evidence of himself trying to assist in the suppression of the fire and he wanted to create evidence regarding a more innocent explanation for the cause of the fire,” according to the affidavit.
Rinderknecht got into his car and drove away, but then turned around after he spotted fire engines headed toward the scene, the affidavit states. He allegedly walked back up the same trail from earlier and took iPhone videos of the Lachman Fire and firefighters. By the next day, the fire appeared to those on scene to be extinguished. But it roared back to life less than a week later, leading to the Palisades Fire and its vast destruction throughout Pacific Palisades. The fire was finally contained on January 31. An interview and a pulsing carotid On January 24 – while the Palisades Fire was still burning – investigators interviewed Rinderknecht about his alleged actions on New Year’s Eve.
In the interview, he made statements investigators determined were inconsistent with the GPS evidence about where he was when he first saw the fire and called 911, the affidavit states. He said one correct thing – that the fire began on the hillside below and south of the Hidden Buddha area, according to the affidavit. “The investigators are not aware of any other way for Rinderknecht to have known this non-public information other than having witnessed the start of the fire,” the affidavit states.
Further, the investigators noticed his carotid artery “would pulsate and become visible” when they asked how the fire started and who started it, a physical symptom supposedly indicating he was “extremely anxious” about that issue, according to the affidavit. Still, determining how the Lachman Fire on New Year’s Eve actually began required painstaking analysis. As the affidavit explains, investigators ruled out fireworks, lightning, power lines and sunlight refraction. They examined smoking as a possible cause based on Rinderknecht’s statement that he sometimes smoked, but determined the weather conditions were inconsistent with the theory.
Instead, they concluded the fire was incendiary and likely started from a lighter. The affidavit gives several clues as to the identity of the specific lighter. On December 31, a video from Rinderknecht’s iPhone showed what appeared to be a green, barbecue-style lighter in his apartment, the affidavit states. That same lighter was found in the glove compartment of his car on January 24. Rinderknecht’s DNA was found on the lighter, the affidavit says. In cellphone video taken on January 1 at 1:44 a.m., over an hour after the fire began, the glove compartment of his car was open.
During his January 24 interview with investigators, Rinderknecht admitted he brought a lighter to the Hidden Buddha area, the affidavit states. He said he could not remember which kind.