The ex-NFL player accused of k!lling his partner asked ChatGPT how to get medical help without calling the police, according to evidence prosecutors entered at a preliminary hearing on Monday.
Darron Lee, 31, was arrested Feb. 5 after deputies found Gabriella Perpetuo, 29, dead at a home on Snow Cone Way in Ooltewah. He is charged with first-degree murd£r and tampering with or fabricating evidence.
He asked the artificial intelligence assistant whether a fall could cause bruising to two eyes and “two stabby looking wounds,” according to evidence shown in court.
During testimony, Hamilton County Sheriff’s Office detective Brian Lockhart said Lee named his chatbot Allie and sent his messages under the name Xander. Not all of his messages would be published to the court this early in the case, prosecutors said.
In one message sent the day before his arrest, Lee asked the assistant what to do when a friend has to handle someone nonresponsive but doesn’t want to call the police.
“Fiancee did her crazy thing again, and now she’s messed up,” Lee told 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 isnt waking up or responding, what do I do?”
Lee discussed the wounds she had and told the chatbot that she got blood all over the place, according to messages shown in court.
Some of the messages sound as though Lee is asking on behalf of a friend, according to the detective.
“‘Here is exactly what to tell your friend,'” Lockhart read the chatbot’s response aloud in court. “‘This is the safest way to handle it without framing it as police trouble.'”
District Attorney Coty Wamp questioned the detective about the messages. He said they were obtained from a forensic download, and the software appeared to give Lee advice.
“Do you recall what message from Mr. Lee, you may or may not, resulted in ChatGPT telling him to pause the joking?” District Attorney Coty Wamp asked.
Lockhart couldn’t name a specific message, but he said that while chatting with the artificial intelligence during this time period, Lee used acronyms like LOL for “laughing out loud” in the messages.
Lee had dozens of conversations with the chatbot about what he did to Perpetuo, according to Wamp. At the hearing, she asked for the judge to move the case forward and keep the same bond conditions.
She listed the findings from the medical examiner’s office, which she said included knocked-out front teeth, stab wounds, and a broken neck. She said the cause of Perpetuo’s death was blunt force trauma.
Lee claimed his partner fell in the shower, she said, and he didn’t tell the police that anyone 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,” she said, “asking ChatGPT the exact questions someone would ask ChatGPT who has just murdered his fiancée with blunt force trauma and stab wounds.”
There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence in Lee’s case, according to Deputy Public Defender Mike Little.
“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 of Lee’s charges to the grand jury. ‘
After hearing that there was a 24-hour delay between Lee consulting ChatGPT and when the officers were called, she decided to leave Lee’s bond conditions unchanged.
“I’m even more convinced now that the offense was especially heinous, atrocious, or cruel and that involved torture or serious physical abuse beyond that necessary to produce death,” she said.
