Finances and the trajectory of a knife wound took center stages during a hearing in an OnlyFans model’s murder case in Miami on Thursday.
Courtney Clenney, 26, also known online as Courtney Tailor, stands accused of murder in the second degree over the stabbing death of her boyfriend Christian Tobechukwu “Toby” Obumseli, 27, a cryptocurrency trader with whom the defendant lived in a posh Miami apartment. Courtney Clenney has maintained that she stabbed Obumseli in self-defense.
The extent of the income her Tailor persona helped her to amass from years of sexually-charged online work via the OnlyFans platform was a subject of some dispute as the defendant made her case for pre-trial release during a nearly three-hour-long bond hearing before Judge Laura Shearon Cruz. Thursday’s hearing was itself an extension of a sluggish proceeding that began on Tuesday.
Courtney Clenney appeared in court on Nov. 15, 2022. (Image via the Law&Crime YouTube channel.)
Prosecutors have alleged in previous court filings that Clenney netted more than $3 million from OnlyFans between 2020 and this past August. On Thursday, the state claimed she had made $900,000 in 2020 and more than $1.8 million in 2021.
The defendant’s father, however, said her net worth was considerably lower – and that he was in a prime position to know.
Kim Clenney testified that his daughter has about $11,000 to her name currently, along with $375,000 in equity in her house.
The elder Clenney told the court that some of his daughter’s money was wired to his accounts for safeguarding because she was “a mess” due to trauma and heavy drinking – at least the latter of which led to a stint in rehab. The defendant’s father said the arrangement made sense because he has finance degree and worked for fifteen years as a financial adviser.
Kim Clenney referenced three specific Bank of America accounts held by his daughter and a series of wire transfers out of those accounts. The wires started on April 12 of this year, he said, and involved amounts of $121,000, $1,013,000, and $50,000. His daughter’s accounts were left with a few thousand dollars after the transfers, he added, but they have since fluctuated in value. He went on to say that his own account swelled at one point to $1,184,000 after the transfers.
Courtney Clenney appears in police body camera video.
Prosecutors pointed to the funds to argue that the defendant was a flight risk.
The defendant’s father disagreed with suggestions from law enforcement that the accounts at one point contained around $2 million and said some of the money was used to purchase a house. Other money — more than $35,000 — went to Clenney’s rehab. Considerable sums were spent on her criminal defense fees.
“She had been traumatized for quite some time, but especially after April 3rd,” the defendant’s father told the court.
That’s the date Obumseli died by Courtney Clenney’s hand.
Kim Clenney later sparred with prosecutors who suggested he might lie to help his daughter.
“I resent that accusation,” he said.
The father also testified that the defendant was unlikely to recoup substantial largesse if she were released pre-trial, telling the court that a “manager” at OnlyFans asserted that the website would not allow her to reopen an account should she get out of jail on bond – adding that he was unaware until recently that his daughter made significant sums from the website.
Kim Clenney also said he was “a thousand percent” comfortable with his daughter staying at his house should she make bond.
Courtney Clenney. (Image via a Miami-Dade County Jail booking photo dated Aug. 26, 2022.)
Miami-Dade County Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Kenneth Hutchins also testified on Thursday about the way the victim died.
Hutchins confirmed that a “singular wound” to Obumseli’s chest was the likely cause of death. That wound, the long-serving medical examiner affirmed, was consistent with a knife injury.
Asked to exactly describe the wound, Hutchins said:
It’s a sharp force injury wound that has nice, clean, sharp margins, it’s extended open, it was 4.4 centimeters in length with the sutures in it and when the sutures are removed, it’s 4 by 1.5 centimeters. There’s a lot of hemorrhage beneath it and there’s no contusion or abrasion around it, so that suggests it’s a sharp force injury and not some other type of injury.
“Are you a knife-throwing expert?” a prosecutor asked Hutchins at one point – suggesting that the defense might have something to say about throwing knives at some point in the future.
“No, I am not,” Hutchins replied. “I don’t know whether the person who is charged with this is a knife thrower. As a hypothetical, my opinion is it was a stab wound.”
Clenney allegedly told officers at the time of her arrest that she had thrown the knife that killed her boyfriend. Prosecutors have alleged that the angle and the depth of the fatal wound suggest that the knife was not thrown.
The judge said she would reserve her judgment on the bond issue until Dec. 8, 2022.
Aaron Keller contributed to this report.
[image via Law&Crime Network]