The detention hearing for the OnlyFans model Florida authorities have charged with murder for fatally stabbing her African immigrant boyfriend is underway in a Miami courtroom.
During testimony that began last week, prosecutors told the court the 26-year-old’s seven-figure income from the adult content site makes her substantial flight risk, complicating a judge’s decision to allow her release from Miami-Dade Jail until trial.
On Thursday, Nov. 10, the prosecution pushed the narrative that Courtney Clenney, who is currently incarcerated after the April 2022 stabbing of her lover Christian Obumseli, might flee the country if she is granted a bond.
Prosecutors presented evidence Clenney earned $966,692 in 2020 and $1.8 million in 2021.
The court also said the young moneymaker funneled two large wire transfers, $1.1 million and $50,000, to her father’s bank account after she stabbed Obumseli. The state alleges she attempted to hide money just in case she had to leave the country to avoid a nasty trial.
They believe this further proves she is a flight risk and should not be offered a bond.
A linchpin in their flight risk theory is her occupation. As a virtual actor, she works in “a profession she can maintain abroad if she flees the country, an act she can certainly afford financially.”
Clenney’s defense attorney Sabrina Puglisi rebutted the prosecution by saying her client was intending to use the money to buy property in Texas and “creating ties to the community” there. “We don’t think she’s going to flee.”
Circuit Judge Laura Shearon Cruz is to decide whether Clenney should be released on bond, be allowed to go home on house arrest, or remain incarcerated until the trial.
When the hearing resumed on Tuesday, Nov. 15, the court heard extensive testimony from Miami Police Detective Yermaine Briceno as prosecutors and the defense wrangled over the issue of whether Clenney’s claim of self-defense should carry weight in considering het for pre-trial release.
The Miami Herald reports that Briceno, who was one of the responding officers to the scene of the April 3 slaying, told the court Tuesday that when he questioned Clenney initially “At that point, we were looking at it as a [case] of self-defense.”
The defense attorneys argue that this initial police determination, which ultimately changed before Clenney’s August arrest in Hawaii, is the correct one and their client does not deserve to be locked up before trial.
One piece of evidence played during Tuesday’s hearing was of Clenney dancing with bruises on her legs. This was important because this was taken before the stabbing and discounts the allegation they were a result of him attacking her.
This comes a day after newly released video gives a deeper glimpse into the turbulent relationship between the two. Almost a year before the fatal stabbing grabbed national headlines, Clenney was arrested in Las Vegas on charges of domestic battery against Obumseli.
On Monday, Nov. 14, local station NBC Miami released video of Clenney being arrested in Sin City on July 27, 2021, at the Cosmopolitan Resort and Casino by the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police.
Officers were called to the hotel for “a family disturbance,” and detained Clenney after she admitted to throwing a glass at Obumseli, during an argument about his not wanting to go to dinner the previous night.
One of the venue’s security officers said in a sworn statement, the 26-year-old did not shy away from admitting, “it was all her fault.” She even repeated to them the story of throwing the glass on the night she was arrested and told the security detail this wasn’t the first time she threw things at her cryptocurrency trader boyfriend.
The prosecution, led by Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez, is building a case showing the a history of violence in the relationship on the part of Clenney leading up to the stabbing death on Apr. 3 in their luxury condominium. Additional evidence in the court files shows text messages from Obumseli to Clenney describing two previous incidents in which she’d stabbed him.
Evidence in the prosecution’s discovery is startling. In addition to the audio of her calling him racial epithets while on a 911 call, there are multiple photographs of Clenney from the night of the killing covered in blood and with nine of her artificial nails plucked off of her blood-stained hands.
The prosecution previously released evidence to show some outrageous behaviors of the defendant.
Fernandez first released an elevator surveillance tape, where she is seen beating him in the confined space.
Testimony from family and friends and even Clenney’s own varying statements about who perpetrated the abuse in the relationship has helped prosecutors paint the suspect as a victimizer, who became dangerously violent when she could not get her way.
Additional testimony is planned for Thursday, Nov. 17, at 1 p.m.
