The state used scene evidence first, then digital chats, to argue Gabriella Perpétuo’s death was no accident.
CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — A Tennessee courtroom heard prosecutors describe blood in multiple rooms, severe injuries across Gabriella Carvalho Perpétuo’s body and a string of ChatGPT messages they say former NFL player Darron Lee used to test an alibi before calling 911.
By the end of the March 9 hearing, prosecutors had drawn a case built less on a single witness than on the house itself. They argued that the physical evidence in the Ooltewah home did not match Lee’s account that he woke up, found Perpétuo unresponsive and did not know what had happened. The state then used messages from Lee’s phone to argue he had started searching for explanations on Feb. 4, before first responders reached the house on Feb. 5. Lee is charged with first-degree murder and tampering with or fabricating evidence.
The prosecution started with the scene, not the chatbot. Detective testimony described visible blood and blood revealed by Bluestar in numerous rooms. Lockhart said he noticed blood on the walls and on the kitchen island. Photos shown in court, according to local reports, also captured a cluttered interior with broken items and a mattress on the floor because the couple had moved into the home only about 10 days earlier. Those details mattered because prosecutors wanted the judge to picture movement through the house, not a single isolated collapse. They argued the pattern suggested a violent struggle. When deputies asked Lee on body camera footage about broken glass and damage inside, he said a window had been left open and shattered when the house was reheated, and that he had been cleaning it before going to sleep. The state treated that answer as part explanation, part warning sign.
Only after that foundation did prosecutors turn to the phone. The messages they displayed were striking because they tracked closely with injuries later described in court. One question asked whether “stab wound like punctures” could come from hitting something in a fall. Another asked about swollen eyes. Another said there was blood “all over the damn place.” Hamilton County District Attorney Coty Wamp argued that Lee was trying to workshop a narrative that could make the injuries sound accidental or at least less suspicious when help was finally called. In her phrasing, he was using ChatGPT as “a legal adviser” and “a defense attorney.” The prosecution also pointed to a response shown in court that included language about handling the situation without framing it as police trouble. That let the state present the messages not as panic but as strategy.
The medical testimony gave that argument force. The preliminary autopsy report, as read in court, listed 12 injuries that together constituted blunt force trauma. The reported injuries included swelling and bruising to the face, a scalp hematoma, a subdural hematoma, a laceration near the brow, a fractured cheek bone, broken front teeth, a perimortem fracture in the upper cervical spine, multiple shallow stab wounds to the chest and left thigh, and a bite mark on the left shoulder. Prosecutors said that injury pattern undermined the idea of a simple fall. They also suggested the violence may have unfolded over more than a brief moment. Defense attorney Mike Little said the state still had only circumstantial evidence and had not shown exactly what happened inside the house. His argument was that a troubling scene and severe injuries do not automatically answer the legal question of who caused them and with what intent.
The hearing also showed how the case is expanding beyond one day in court. Judge Tori Smith found probable cause and sent the matter on toward a grand jury. Lee remains held without bond, a status set earlier in the case. Wamp has publicly said her office is considering whether the death penalty could be sought. Meanwhile, Perpétuo’s family has filed a wrongful death lawsuit in Hamilton County seeking $50 million, split between compensatory and punitive damages. The civil filing says Lee intentionally assaulted her and describes injuries consistent with a violent physical struggle. Those parallel tracks mean the case now carries both criminal jeopardy and a separate push for financial accountability by the victim’s family.
There was also a difference in tone between the two sides that shaped the hearing. Prosecutors spoke in confident, cumulative terms, adding blood evidence, body camera footage, autopsy findings and phone records into one narrative. The defense used narrower language and kept returning to uncertainty. Little told the court that “something happened” in the house but said no one yet knows exactly what. Wamp countered with one of the day’s most memorable lines, saying there are crime scenes and then there are crime scenes like this. That contrast mattered because preliminary hearings are not trials. The judge was not deciding guilt. The judge was deciding whether the state had enough to keep moving. On that measure, the prosecution succeeded.
The case now waits for the next formal step in Hamilton County, where grand jurors will decide whether to return an indictment. Until then, Lee remains jailed, and the state’s most visible theory is the one heard in court: that the evidence inside the home and on the phone point in the same direction.
Author note: Last updated April 6, 2026.