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Former NFL player Darron Lee allegedly asked ChatGPT how to get medical help without involving the police after his partner was found dead, according to evidence presented by prosecutors during a preliminary hearing on Monday.
Lee, 31, was arrested on Feb. 5 after deputies discovered Gabriella Perpetuo, 29, dead at a home on Snow Cone Way in Ooltewah. He is charged with first-degree murder and tampering with or fabricating evidence.
Prosecutors said Lee asked the artificial intelligence assistant whether a fall could cause bruising to both eyes and what he described as “two stabby-looking wounds,” according to messages presented in court.
During testimony, Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office detective Brian Lockhart said Lee had given his chatbot the name “Allie” and sent messages under the name “Xander.” Prosecutors said not all of the messages would be made public at this stage of the case.
In one message sent the day before his arrest, Lee asked the assistant what someone should do if a friend had to deal with a person who was unresponsive but did not want to call the police.
“Fiancée did her crazy thing again, and now she’s messed up,” Lee wrote to the chatbot. “I wake up and she has two swollen eyes (I didn’t do anything, self-inflicted), she stabbed herself, slit her eye? Idk but she isn’t waking up or responding. What do I do?”
According to messages shown in court, Lee also discussed the injuries and said there was blood “all over the place.”
Detective Lockhart testified that some of the messages appeared to be framed as if Lee were asking on behalf of a friend.
“Here is exactly what to tell your friend,” Lockhart read from the chatbot’s response in court. “This is the safest way to handle it without framing it as police trouble.”
District Attorney Coty Wamp questioned Lockhart about the messages, which he said were obtained through a forensic download of Lee’s device. The software appeared to generate responses offering advice.
Wamp also asked whether Lockhart recalled a message that prompted ChatGPT to tell Lee to “pause the joking.”
Lockhart said he could not identify the exact message but noted that Lee used acronyms such as “LOL,” meaning “laughing out loud,” while chatting with the AI.
Wamp said Lee had dozens of conversations with the chatbot about what happened to Perpetuo. She asked the court to move the case forward and keep Lee’s bond conditions unchanged.
She cited findings from the medical examiner’s office, including knocked-out front teeth, stab wounds and a broken neck. According to Wamp, the cause of Perpetuo’s death was blunt-force trauma.
Lee claimed his partner had fallen in the shower, she said, and told police that no one else had entered the home.
“But if that’s not enough, you have Mr. Lee using ChatGPT as a legal adviser, as a defense attorney, asking ChatGPT to basically give him advice on how you cover up a crime scene,” Wamp told the court. “Asking ChatGPT the exact questions someone would ask who has just murdered his fiancée with blunt-force trauma and stab wounds.”
Deputy Public Defender Mike Little argued that the case relies heavily on circumstantial evidence.
“All I can remind the court is that we don’t know what happened,” Little said. “The court doesn’t know what happened. Something happened, but we don’t know what happened.”
General Sessions Judge Tori Smith found probable cause to send both charges against Lee to a grand jury.
After hearing there was a 24-hour delay between Lee consulting ChatGPT and calling authorities, Smith decided to leave his bond conditions unchanged.
“I’m even more convinced now that the offense was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel and involved torture or serious physical abuse beyond that necessary to produce death,” she said.
