Ex-Jet Darron Lee Asked ChatGPT About ‘Stabby Looking Wounds,’ Prosecutors Allege

The handcuffs came off only long enough for Darron Lee to sign his name. Then they went back on. The 31-year-old former New York Jets linebacker stood in a Hamilton County, Tennessee, courtroom in a jail jumpsuit on Thursday as Judge Barry Steelman set the date that will decide the rest of his life: September 20, 2027.

Lee is charged with first-degree murder in the February death of his girlfriend, 29-year-old Gabriella Perpétuo. He remains behind bars, and prosecutors have not taken the death penalty off the table.

It is a staggering fall for a player who was once one of the most coveted defensive prospects in football. An Ohio State star, Lee was a first-round NFL Draft pick who started his career with the Jets before bouncing through the league. A decade ago, his name was called on draft night to applause. On Thursday, it was called on a criminal docket.

According to the medical examiner, Perpétuo died of multiple blunt force injuries. The autopsy report listed 12 different injuries, including multiple hematomas, bone fractures and stab wounds — a clinical inventory that will sit at the center of everything the jury hears next September.

The ChatGPT Searches

What prosecutors say Lee did in the hours around her death may prove as damaging as the forensic evidence. During preliminary hearings, prosecutors alleged that Lee turned to ChatGPT with a series of remarkable questions: how to get medical help for someone without calling the police, whether a fall could cause bruising to two eyes and what he called “two stabby looking wounds,” and what kinds of injuries would be consistent with someone falling in the shower.

That last detail matters because of what Lee allegedly told a responding officer. According to police bodycam footage from the scene, the former linebacker said Perpétuo “may have slipped and fallen in the shower” — while denying he knew what had happened to her.

Prosecutors will ask a jury to weigh that explanation against the autopsy. Twelve injuries. Fractures. Wounds the state describes as stab-like. A shower slip, the state’s theory goes, does not explain any of it.

Lee’s attorney, Neal Pinkston, entered a ‘no plea’ on his client’s behalf during a July hearing. In Tennessee, that functions as a not-guilty plea, and the defense has given no public indication of its theory of the case.

A $50 Million Lawsuit and a Long Wait

Parallel to the criminal case, Perpétuo’s mother, Noemia, filed a $50 million wrongful death lawsuit against Lee shortly after her daughter’s killing — a civil case that will move on its own track regardless of what happens in criminal court.

The wait until trial will be long but not unusual. In Tennessee, first-degree murder trials commonly begin 12 to 24 months after the initial charges are filed, as both sides work through forensic evidence, expert witnesses and pretrial motions. For a case built on a contested cause of death and a defendant’s own alleged internet searches, that preparation window matters.

What the trial will ultimately come down to is the distance between two stories. In one, a young woman slipped in a shower. In the other, a former NFL star facing the end of his athletic career is accused of killing his girlfriend and then asking a chatbot how to keep the police away.

Lee’s football résumé is what makes the courtroom images so jarring. The Jets took him 20th overall in the 2016 draft out of Ohio State, where he had been a defensive centerpiece of a national championship team. He started for three seasons in New York, then was traded to Kansas City in 2019 — a stint Chiefs fans will remember, even if it was brief. Later stops never recaptured the early promise, and in recent years his name had faded from rosters and headlines alike. Thursday put it back in the worst possible way.

The stakes could hardly be higher. First-degree murder in Tennessee carries the possibility of the death penalty, and prosecutors have signaled they are keeping that option alive while the case moves toward trial. The state’s theory, laid out across preliminary hearings, paints a picture of a killing followed by a scramble to explain it — first to an AI chatbot, then to a police officer’s body camera.

For Perpétuo’s family, the trial date is the first fixed point on a long road. Her mother’s $50 million civil suit runs on a separate track, but both cases orbit the same unanswered questions: what happened inside that home in February, and why the man accused of causing it allegedly reached for his phone to ask a chatbot instead of dialing 911.

Lee is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty. But on Thursday, standing in handcuffs while a judge read out a trial date eleven months away, the former first-round pick looked like a man whose toughest opponent is no longer across the line of scrimmage.