Judge weighs bid to free OnlyFans model from jail before trial on murder charge in Miami
(Update: A Miami-Dade judge said Thursday that she will issue an order by Dec. 8 on whether to continue detaining a jailed OnlyFans model before trial on a second-degree murder charge of fatally stabbing her boyfriend.)
State prosecutors argued Tuesday that Courtney Clenney, an OnlyFans model, should remain locked up in jail before standing trial on a charge of stabbing her boyfriend to death in their luxury Miami apartment in early April that capped a series of past violent confrontations in which they said she was the aggressor and he was the victim.
Clenney’s defense attorneys countered that she acted in self-defense and was the victim of domestic abuse at the hands of her boyfriend during their stormy relationship. They argued that the 26-year-old Texas transplant has roots in her native state and doesn’t deserve to be jailed before her murder trial.
But whether Clenney will be getting out of a Miami-Dade lockup before trial will be up to Circuit Judge Laura Shearon Cruz, who heard the lengthy testimony of a Miami police detective on Tuesday and resumed Clenney’s detention hearing on Thursday when the Miami-Dade medical examiner took the stand.
Clenney, 26, faces up to life in prison if convicted of second-degree murder with a deadly weapon.
Assistant State Attorney Khalil Quinan argued that the charge against Clenney is defined as a “dangerous crime” with “no conditions for release” under Florida law. He said the evidence shows that during a heated argument with her boyfriend, Clenney grabbed a knife in the kitchen of the couple’s Edgewater apartment and made a “forward motion” when she fatally stabbed Christian Obumseli in the chest on April 3.
“It was not justified at all,” Quinan argued, challenging Clenney’s claim that she acted in “self-defense” and did not commit a crime.
That issue hung heavily over Tuesday’s detention hearing.
Miami police detective Yermaine Briceno said that when he originally investigated the killing and questioned Clenney after the stabbing, he had his doubts about charging her.
“At that point, we were looking at it as a [case] of self-defense,” Briceno testified Tuesday.
But Briceno said he eventually changed his mind by August before asking the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office to seek a warrant for Clenney’s arrest in Hawaii, where she was undergoing rehab treatment for alcohol and substance abuse.
Briceno said he concluded that Clenney was the “aggressor” when the boyfriend was stabbed, after reviewing the following evidence: her police statement that the boyfriend initially assaulted her before she threw a knife at him that hit him in the upper chest near the throat; the recording of a phone call she made to her mother in Texas; her frantic 911 call to police after the stabbing; her history of violent encounters with the boyfriend; and the medical examiner’s autopsy report saying the boyfriend died from a direct stab wound.
But during Tuesday’s hearing, Clenney’s defense attorney Frank Prieto challenged the detective for making numerous “mischaracterizations” in the arrest affidavit about the woman’s behavior before, during and after the stabbing.
Briceno, who remained calm during cross examination, was frequently unable to answer Prieto’s questions about “the context” of his conclusions about Clenney’s behavior during the stabbing but also during other prior violent confrontations between the couple that were captured on video and audio recordings.
“At the beginning, you were looking at this case as self-defense?” Prieto asked the detective at one point.
“Yes,” Briceno testified.
Clenney, who goes by the name Courtney Tailor as an OnlyFans model, showed little emotion during Tuesday’s hearing. But she frequently looked over at her parents, who were sitting in the front row of the courtroom. Clenney’s case has received an extraordinary amount of attention from the news media for the alleged lurid murder in Miami because of her past on the popular website and millions of social media followers.
In a court filing, prosecutors said they want to keep Clenney behind bars, arguing she could easily flee the country before trial. They pointed to the millions of dollars she has made from her racy website and her ability to work as an “influencer” anywhere in the world.
They said Clenney boasts “a profession she can maintain abroad if she flees the country, an act she can certainly afford financially. The defendant furthermore has the means of making a quick escape and financially sustaining herself abroad.”
The filing pointed out that OnlyFans, the popular website where models make money producing explicit content, is based in England, outside of the arm of U.S. law. Clenney’s “means of financially sustaining herself requires a mere internet connection,” prosecutors wrote. The filing detailed Clenney’s wealth, along with “suspicious” wire transfers after the killing that moved money to her dad’s bank account.
Prosecutors provided the court with financial records showing Clenney earned $966,692 in 2020 and $1.8 million in 2021 from OnlyFans. “These totals do not consider any additional unknown sources of income from other influence or advertisement campaigns via other social media platforms,” Quinan wrote.
Prosecutors also pointed to “suspicious” movements of money in the days after Obumseli’s death, but before her arrest: wire transfers totaling $1,134,000 and $50,000 from her account to that of her father.
In a court filing, Clenney’s defense attorneys asked the judge to release their client on house arrest and allow her to complete treatment.
Defense attorney Sabrina Puglisi said last week that Clenney spent her money on buying a house in Texas, “creating ties to the community” there. “We don’t think she’s going to flee,” Puglisi said.
At Tuesday’s hearing, both sides introduced evidence to support their version of events. Prosecutors introduced photos of Instagram posts and a video showing that bruises on Clenney’s arms and legs were already on her body before the killing. But Clenney’s defense attorneys argued that she suffered those bruises at the hands of Obumseli.
The state’s presentation laid out the case that Cenney was the primary aggressor the day of the killing — and in a relationship that had grown increasingly violent in the months before the killing.
Prosecutors pointed to Clenney’s arrest on a battery charge in Las Vegas in 2021, in which she admitted she threw a glass at Obumseli and she “likes” to throw objects at him.
They also referenced text messages between Clenney and Obumseli that revealed she’d attacked him on several occasions in the months before his death. As first reported by the Miami Herald, those attacks included Clenney stabbing him in the leg and hitting him with a phone in October 2021, as well as stabbing him in the chin in January, shortly after they moved from Texas to Miami.
“Immediately following the incident, [Clenney] coldly told Christian to ‘Enjoy the hospital,’ “ Quinan, the prosecutor, wrote in the 12-page motion calling for her detention before trial.
After that attack, Obumseli, who was described as a bitcoin trader in court, began recording Clenney’s “outbursts and acts of violence,” according to prosecutors. The State Attorney’s Office previously released a video showing her attacking him in an elevator and recordings made by Obumseli that depicted her rage during arguments. One recording included her using racial slurs against Obumseli, who is Black.
But Clenney’s defense attorneys said the recordings, texts and other evidence were cherry-picked and provided “a one-sided snapshot in time. It’s not the whole story.”
“As we prepare Courtney’s defense for trial, we are currently piecing together all of the evidence, so the jury may understand the totality of the situation when it is presented to them at trial,” they wrote their court filing. “Also, the majority of the records released so far have come from Christian’s cellphone. There is another side to this we look forward to presenting in court.”
