A Tennessee judge sent former NFL linebacker Darron Lee’s murder case to a grand jury after prosecutors said Monday that messages from his phone showed him asking ChatGPT what to do as his girlfriend lay badly injured inside their Ooltewah home.
The ruling pushes the case into a more formal stage after a month of grim hearings, body camera footage and new details about the death of Gabriella Carvalho Perpetuo. Lee, 31, is charged with first-degree murder and tampering with or fabricating evidence. He remains jailed without bond. Prosecutors have said they are still weighing whether to seek the death penalty, but no final decision on capital punishment has been announced. The immediate stakes are now procedural and serious: whether a grand jury returns an indictment, what charges it includes and how quickly the case moves toward arraignment and trial.
Perpetuo was found Feb. 5 at the couple’s rental home on Snow Cone Way in Ooltewah, a community northeast of Chattanooga where the pair had moved only about 10 days earlier, according to testimony introduced at earlier hearings. First responders were sent to the house on a report of CPR in progress and found her unresponsive on the living room floor. Medics tried lifesaving measures, but she died at the scene. Lee was there when deputies arrived. In body camera footage played in court Monday, prosecutors showed Lee telling officers he had been upstairs asleep and did not know why Perpetuo was not responding. He said he came downstairs, tried to speak to her and then called 911. That account has been central to the case from the start because investigators quickly said the scene did not look like an accident. Detectives testified earlier that Lee first suggested Perpetuo, who he said had narcolepsy, may have fallen in the shower, but they said the physical evidence did not fit that explanation.
The hearing Monday focused in part on messages prosecutors said were pulled from Lee’s phone and read aloud in court. According to the testimony, the exchanges began late on Feb. 4, more than 12 hours before the 911 call on Feb. 5. Prosecutors said Lee described a badly injured fiancée who was not waking up and asked what to do. They also said he asked what he should tell a friend dealing with an unresponsive person who wanted to call police, whether puncture-like wounds could come from hitting something in a fall and whether swollen eyes could fit that kind of explanation. In one final message highlighted in court, prosecutors said Lee complained that there was blood all over the house. District Attorney Coty Wamp argued the exchanges were not casual online questions but part of an effort to build an explanation before deputies arrived. In court, she said Lee was “using ChatGPT as a legal advisor.” The defense did not accept that framing, but the messages gave prosecutors a tighter timeline and a more concrete theory of what they say happened in the final hours before Perpetuo died.
Other evidence presented by investigators was older but no less important. Detectives said crime scene photos and BlueStar testing showed blood in numerous parts of the home, including areas where it was not obvious to the naked eye. A detective described blood on walls, floors, the staircase and kitchen surfaces. Prosecutors also pointed to a preliminary autopsy report from Hamilton County Medical Examiner Dr. Stephen Cogswell. According to testimony summarized in local coverage, the report listed multiple injuries that together supported a finding of blunt force trauma. The injuries included major facial bruising, head trauma, fractures to facial bones and teeth, a fracture high in the neck, shallow stab wounds and a recent bite mark. Earlier hearings also described shattered glass and a scene in disarray. Authorities have not publicly laid out every minute of Perpetuo’s last day, identified a murder weapon or said exactly when they believe the fatal assault began. But by the time of Monday’s hearing, prosecutors had built a public outline that rested on three main pillars: Lee’s changing explanations, the condition of the house and the digital record they said showed him trying to shape a story before calling for help.
The case has drawn extra attention because Lee was once a high draft pick and a recognizable football name. He starred at Ohio State, won a national title there and was taken 20th overall by the New York Jets in the 2016 NFL draft. He later played for the Kansas City Chiefs and Buffalo Bills and was on the Chiefs team that won the Super Bowl after the 2019 season. That background does not change the evidence, but it has made each court appearance national news and sharpened the contrast between Lee’s former public profile and the allegations now facing him. Prosecutors have also argued that this was not an isolated break from an otherwise quiet record. At Lee’s Feb. 11 bond hearing, Wamp said he was on probation in both Ohio and Florida from earlier cases and described him as a danger to women. AP and Reuters reported that a judge kept him jailed without bond after hearing testimony about the severity of the scene and Lee’s history in other states. Those earlier proceedings set the stage for Monday’s hearing, where the focus shifted from bond and public safety to probable cause and the evidence that will carry the case into grand jury review.
Monday’s hearing did not decide guilt. Its job was narrower: to determine whether prosecutors had shown enough to keep the case moving. By the end, the judge bound the case over to a grand jury, and Lee remained in custody. That means prosecutors will now present the case in a closed proceeding and seek an indictment. If the grand jury returns one, Lee would face arraignment on the indicted charges and the case would move deeper into the trial process. For now, the public charge list still includes first-degree murder and tampering with or fabricating evidence. Another unresolved issue is punishment. At the Feb. 11 hearing, prosecutors said two aggravating factors could support a capital case, but they also said no final choice had been made on whether to seek the death penalty. No new court date was widely reported Monday night. That leaves the next milestone less dramatic than the hearing itself but just as important: the filing of an indictment, or any formal notice from prosecutors if they decide to pursue the most severe penalty available under Tennessee law.
Inside the courtroom, the case turned on voices from two very different moments. One was Lee’s voice on body camera footage, where he told deputies he had been asleep and did not know what had happened. The other was the prosecution’s reading of the phone messages, which sought to show forethought rather than confusion. The defense pushed back in simpler terms. Public defender Mike Little argued that no one in court yet knew exactly what happened inside the house, even if it was clear something violent had occurred. That tension, between a chaotic scene, a digital record and a defense warning against premature conclusions, gave the hearing its shape. It also explained why Monday mattered. The court was not weighing a verdict. It was deciding whether the state’s account had enough support to move forward. By the end of the day, the answer was yes, but only to that limited question. The harder questions, about intent, timing and whether jurors will accept the state’s interpretation of the phone evidence, remain for later stages of the case.
As of Tuesday, Lee was still jailed without bond, the case was headed to a grand jury and prosecutors had not announced whether they would seek the death penalty. The next clear step will come when the grand jury acts or when the Hamilton County district attorney sets out the formal path of the prosecution.
Author note: Last updated March 10, 2026.