The husband of a popular online course coach who was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison for a murder-for-hire scheme is speaking out about his wife’s case.
Ashley Grayson was sentenced earlier this month to 10 years in federal prison and three years of supervised release after being convicted of one count of use of interstate commerce facilities in the commission of murder-for-hire.
Grayson and her husband, Joshua, were criminally indicted in July 2023 for the plot. Federal prosecutors alleged that the Mississippi-based couple contacted a contract killer in Tennessee between August and September 2022 and paid that individual to murder a person identified in the federal indictment as “D.H.” That individual was not harmed.
A jury convicted Grayson in March. Her husband was cleared of wrongdoing.
Now, after remaining silent about the case and subsequent sentencing, Joshua Grayson has spoken out online to declare his wife’s innocence.
“Regardless of the verdict, Ashley is innocent,” Grayson wrote on Facebook days after his wife’s sentencing.
Grayson wrote a lengthy post claiming he and his wife were “set up” and excoriated two witnesses for their parts in the case.
A transcript of a court conference in October 2023 between a federal prosecutor and the Graysons’ attorney includes statements from the prosecution about video evidence from a call between Ashley Grayson and a witness identified as Olivia Johnson.
U.S. Attorney Patrick Neal Oldham stated that in that call, Grayson expressed her desire for Johnson and her partner to kill three people and that she communicated this desire by saying she wanted them to “be gone.”
She also reportedly stated that while two murders could be held off, she wanted one person, the individual named in the indictment, to be executed immediately.
Oldham stated that Grayson wanted these targets killed after they attacked her business reputation on social media.
In 2022, Grayson filed a defamation lawsuit against a financial coach named Derricka Harwell, alleging that a comment Harwell posted under one of Grayson’s Facebook posts was “false, defamatory, and injurious.” The suit claimed that Harwell’s post “permanently damaged” Grayson’s personal reputation “online and around the world” and made people believe that Grayson “stalked and harassed” Harwell.
Oldham said that the contracted killers asked for $20,000 to carry out the murders and drove to Dallas to meet the Graysons, who paid them half. Surveillance video also reportedly caught the Graysons meeting with Johnson and her partner at an apartment complex to complete the transaction.
Oldham said the murder was never carried out, and the Johnsons went to an attorney in Memphis to report the plot. He added that, around the same time, Ashley Grayson went to the FBI under the suspicion that the Johnsons might have been trying to extort her.
According to Oldham, Grayson and Olivia Johnson first met when Grayson was operating a credit repair business years before launching her Digital Course Recipe enterprise. Grayson approached Johnson to ask if she would be open to promoting her business on her hugely followed social media accounts.
A defense attorney for the Graysons argued that the video showing the conversation between Ashley Grayson and Johnson had been “spliced and diced” and was incomplete. He also stated that he didn’t know whether Johnson had “made the video.”
Joshua Grayson echoed the same assertions, stating that “the prosecutors and the judge allowed an illegal, tampered and edited video” made by the Johnsons that made his wife “look like she said something that she didn’t.”
“And even in (Johnson’s) edits Ashley still never said die, or kill in the video,” Grayson wrote.
He also claimed that the government didn’t have “any legal evidence” to incriminate his wife.
“I’ll wire anybody $500k that can show me where Ashley said in a video, phone call, trial paperwork or any documentation that she wanted to have anyone killed or anyone killed in front her kids,” Grayson wrote.” “Not an edited video of what someone put together. Not an AI video you put together. The legit video call!”
Ashley Grayson’s attorney filed a notice of appeal in the case. Atlanta Black Star reached out to her attorneys, who declined to comment.
“It’s all in the transcript(s) but they won’t tell y’all that, and y’all too lazy to read so we’re public enemy #1. She wants to play victim so bad, and yall letting her. Everybody act like they are so scared to read the transcripts,” Grayson also wrote.
