Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Courtney Clenney, OnlyFans Model, Charged in Stabbing Murder

Episode Date: September 11, 2022

Christian Obumseli, boyfriend of OnlyFans model Courtney Clenney is found by police in their Miami apartment fatally stabbed. The pair have been dating for approximately two years and have a reportedly “tumultuous” relationship. Courtney Clenney claims to have been acting out of self defense, but the physical evidence may seem to suggest something else. Courtney Clenney has since been charged with second degree murder. In this episode of Body Bags, forensics expert Joseph Scott Morgan and Jackie Howard discuss the details of the stabbing, the physical evidence found at the crime scene, the injuries sustained by Christian Obumseli that led to his death, and how witness testimony will play into this ongoing case.   Show Notes: 0:00 - Intro 2:09 - Courtney Clenney’s OnlyFans account and relationship with Christian Obumseli 3:44 - Video and pictures of Courtney Clenney covered in blood 5:00 - Courtney Clenney and Christian Obumseli’s lavish lifestyle  7:32 - The 911 call and the physical evidence of the crime scene 12:02 - What are the police seeing at the crime scene? 18:58 - What it means for blood to “leech out” 22:03 - How the blood appeared on Courtney Clenney 25:36 - The timeline of the crime 29:05 - Injuries sustained by Christian Obumseli 35:34 - Knowing what we know now, is Courtney Clenney’s claim that she threw the knife while acting in self defense possible? 40:51 - If what Courtney Clenney claims happened is true, would the remaining blood patterns be different? 44:20 -  How will the video evidence and witness statements of assault play into the case? 48:28 - How do you approach a “he said, she said” court case? 51:14 - Final thoughts and wrapping up the show  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan. Miami, Florida is probably one of the most beautiful locations in the country that I've personally ever visited. You know, some people describe locations like it as saying that everywhere you look is essentially a postcard. You know, that kind of beautiful emerald green water and the pure white sand and palm trees, things that we don't normally see in these locations that we live in around the country. And I think when we begin to think about, you seek a place like that to find peace and

happiness, and you try to live in that environment as if it is paradise. Life gets in the way, doesn't it? You begin to suddenly realize that within paradise, it can completely turn into a horror show. Today, we're going to talk about an OnlyFans model and her boyfriend. Who wound up in the middle of a bloodbath. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Jackie Howard, executive producer with Crime Stories, and Nancy Grace, I've got to tell you, every time I've ever been to Miami, I've often

thought, you know, what in the world do you have to do? What kind of money do you have to make to live in a place like this? It's absolutely gorgeous. You've got, you know, the salt air. You've got the beautiful beach. You can go walk up and down. It's exotic. It looks like you're in the middle of the Caribbean, and I guess in kind of a way you are. But with Courtney Clinney and her boyfriend, it was anything but perfection. It did end up being a nightmare, certainly, for this couple, Joe. Courtney Clinney is an OnlyFans model, and she has 2 million followers on Instagram. And this may have been in part, which paid for the lifestyle that you're talking about, Joe.

OnlyFans is a subscriber account. And with 2 million followers, paying between $5 and $50 a month for access to her content would certainly make a comfortable lifestyle possible. Courtney Clenny was dating Christian Obamsele. They had been living together for a couple of years. And inside this apartment that day, he left to go get Subway to get them some lunch. During that time, Clenny made a couple of Instagram posts. She called her mother. But when Obenselli came back, reportedly an argument ensued. We don't know what, but the argument resulted in

Courtney Clunney reportedly stabbing Christian Obenselli. And we find out later that there had been multiple reports of arguments coming from that household. But the biggest image that is standing out from this alleged murder is a photo of Clint East standing on their balcony in a bra covered in blood. For forensic scientists, for a crime scene investigator, that's absolute gold. Because what do we associate most with death investigation? I think that for the average person on the street, other than simply a dead body, it's going to be blood. Because it's one of those things, when you take a look at it, you think about origin. You know, why is there such a huge volume of blood? Why do you have it on your person?

You know, from whence did it come? Because, you know, blood is essentially, aside from certain medical conditions, is only going to be present as a result of some type of trauma. And look, I've seen these images of Clint E. that were put out there by TMZ were actually quite striking. And for people that are interested in true crime, this is something, this is a rare bird's eye view. And it's literally a bird's eye view because you can see it from whoever shot this video was in an elevated position, looking down toward this balcony on this,

you know, on this apartment area. And I want to back up just for a second. We were talking about, you know, kind of some of the details and, you know, people making money, it has been alleged that the apartment that they were living

in at that time, if I'm not mistaken, was roughly in the, now just hold on to your hat for a second, it was roughly in the $10,000 per month nut that they had to make every month. Just let that sink in just for a second. Can you imagine having to come up with $10,000 every month just to put a roof over your head? I mean, you know, for average folks like us, you know, that's quite a big number. You know, you're up in the thin air. So you can only imagine there's a lot of pressure in this environment to be able to generate that kind of dough in order to live, essentially. And that's just to have the roof over your head. That doesn't account for everything else that's involved with this.

So this is some type of, that they're leading. And then when you put it in the context that there has been a homicide that has been committed in this $10,000 per month rental, all right, and you're looking down on it, you get this kind of bird's eye view and peek behind the curtains, if you will, and you can see her seated there. It looks like she might be cuffed, seated on the floor, leaning back against the wall. And you can see dogs or a dog, I think, kind of walking up toward her and then walking away. And even at that distance with that grainy video, you can appreciate how much blood is covering her. So it's an odd thing. And you can see the police working in there.

You can kind of get faint images of uniformed cops kind of moving about and her kind of staring down. And, you know, for a moment, you know, you kind of detach yourself from the forensics of it. And you begin to think, you know, what in the world is going through her mind at that moment, Tom? Police came to the scene because of a 911 call. And in that 911 call, you can hear in the background Courtney Clinton saying, I'm sorry, baby. I'm sorry.

That would stand to reason that she is the person who did this. Then we find her covered with blood. So at that point, we would have to make a big assumption that she was the perpetrator. Yet she was not arrested for murder at that time. I've often had cases where you have individuals that are found at a scene that are encrusted with blood. And this is kind of a very interesting point from a forensic standpoint versus your individual humanity. Because, you know, when you roll up on a scene as an investigator, first off, you don't know what in the world has happened. You didn't witness it. You've been summoned to the scene as

an investigator. And here you have this horrific environment. And I think at a primal level, the first thing you want to try to do is kind of push it out of your mind. You see people that are impacted by the scene. Perhaps they are blood soaked. And, you know, your human side, you want to say, here, let me get you a warm towel. Let me get you some baby wipes or whatever it is that you're carrying in your kit and, you know, clean yourself up. But you have to fight that urge in this environment. And you say, well, Morgan, why would you want to do that? Well, her, Courtney Clinney, at this moment in time, she is that point of contact where you know that she's going to have evidence that she can give you verbally as to what happened. Because that's going to be one of the biggest questions you're going to want to have an answer for.

But also, there's another bigger tell here, and that's physical evidence that's contained on her body. You know, for every blood stain that she has on her person, there is a tale to be told relative to that point of contact. Whether it is, say for instance, you find your lover bleeding and you're trying to stem the flow of blood. You're trying to soothe them, so you draw them into you. And also, you have to begin to think, well, they're there and they might be responsible for this. And maybe, for instance, you've got an arterial spray pattern that's very fine. It's very distinct that has rested on the clothing. You need to keep that in pristine condition. One of the problems that happens many times in cases like this.

First off, police do not keep an eye sometimes on a suspect because everybody's a suspect at this moment in time. And they allow them to go into another location, into a bathroom, to wash their face, wash their hands, you know, just to change clothes maybe and not appropriately collect the clothing. Are you, any opportunity that the individual might have to take away these garments or adjust their appearance from its pristine condition, that is, that condition they are in when you initially observe them, can compromise the entire narrative that the evidence is trying to portray for what had actually happened. So, when you see her seated on the floor there, back to that image, that is a big tell. First off, you know that the police are not allowing her to clean herself up.

So what do you do with her at that point in time? Well, the best thing you can do is photograph. You photograph, photograph, photograph. And as distasteful as it is, and it is, you don't allow her to wash her hands. You don't allow her to clean her face. You don't allow her to wipe her neck off. And you certainly don't allow her to change clothing. Because in a case like this, that information is going to be a treasure trove

moving forward as we begin to interpret what actually happened in that apartment. On that 911 call, you could also hear Obumselli saying that he was losing feeling in his arm and that he was dying. And that's when you hear Clint East say, I'm so sorry, baby. So when the police arrived, you were talking about this arterial spray, Joe, and we suspect that there was allegedly a fight between the two. And that's what resulted in his death. So what would the police have seen? She was covered in blood, but would the apartment have also been covered in blood?

When the police, you know, make this initial entry into this environment, they will see copious. And, you know, that's a term that pathologists love to use, which just means a lot. Copious amount of blood that will probably be pooled in certain locations. Go back to what Obamaceli actually said or could be heard saying, I can't feel anything. I'm losing the feeling in my extremities. And this is something that is encountered with blood loss. As a matter of fact, he's probably becoming what's referred to as shocky at that moment in time. He's going into shock.

His power will change. That is his complexion. It'll look kind of washed out. It doesn't have the vibrance that he would have had in a healthy state. He'll become delirious and this sort of thing. And he's not going to be moving around a lot. So, where he finally comes to rest is going to be kind of the end game as far as he is concerned. However, in an initial attack, let's say he was seated on a sofa. When his body is first breached with an instrument, like a sharp instrument,

if that weapon is withdrawn, you will see a tremendous amount of blood that will initially kind of come out of the body at that point in time. And his response to this, it's kind of a primal response. You know, you feel the sharpness of the pain as an instrument penetrates your body and you reach up to kind of assess it yourself. Blood transfers to your hands. You may clutch your chest. You may try to brace yourself. Blood transfers to your hands. You may clutch your chest. You may try to brace yourself. You may try to reach forward. And if there's an attacker, you're going to grab them. So, you're actually transferring your own you to get away from that initial contact,

from that point in which you were attacked or you perceive yourself to be attacked. And as that happens, your body is twisting, turning, this sort of thing. And if the object, for instance, a knife is not still in place and it's been removed from that location, you will have blood that is either slowly coming out of the body or spurting. Okay. And I think that in this case, you know, sustained an arterial breach at that moment in time. Now, some of that blood is going to remain within the body, but a goodly portion of that is going to begin to come through that defect. And in this case, I believe that it is a sharp force injury. So it'll be a knife, a knife injury.

And if folks at home will think about the way an eye, a human eye looks when it's closed many times if you've never actually seen a stab wound in person if you will close one of your eyes and stare in a mirror and look at kind of how your upper lid and your lower lid form this kind of slit like appearance that's what multiple stab wounds or even singular stab wounds look like. It'll come to a very pronounced point on one end, almost like a closed eye, particularly if it is a single edged weapon. And so you can have quite heart beats, essentially, okay, you will have forced blood out of that defect. And that's what in the world of forensic pathology, these are referred to as. It'll be probably a linear defect, meaning line. The blood will kind of spurt out. It'll

come out in a spray because that's the way it's coursing through your body at that moment in time. Remember, he's not dead. Okay. Heart's still pumping. He's still breathing. So it's being forced out. And as it's being forced out, it's almost like the spray of a water hose.

Okay. It's not really greatly directed. It's not targeted, say like a bullet coming out of a gun. It's kind of sprayed indiscriminately. And you'll see these patterns that have almost a histamine-like appearance to it many times. It's as it's spraying out like the end of a water hose and it's contacting multiple surfaces over a broad ranging area. And you can kind of track these or trail them depending upon the movement of the body. And as, of course, more blood is lost, there'll be less volume of blood

that's coming from this injury. Remember, he said, I can't feel my arms. And as shock begins to set in, those areas where he has moved about as a result of this injury will come to a terminus. It'll end right there where he finally dies or goes into a kind of a static position on the floor where he can no longer move. He would get very, very sleepy, drowsy, that sort of thing as blood has begun to leach out of his body. He's not getting sufficient oxygenation to his brain. Now, what comes into play at this moment in time is what efforts did Clint make? Did she attempt to resuscitate him? And if she did, then that would mean that envision your hands in the center of somebody's chest as

you're doing chest compressions, and you're immediately adjacent to this insult in the chest, this open wound. And every time, think about this, every compression that you make, that is every time you press down on the chest, a little bit of blood is going to leach out, okay? And as that happens, it's going to transfer to your hands. Okay. I got to stop you for a second. I want to understand something you just said.

You said blood is going to leach out. When you use that term, and I've heard you use it often, do you mean a little trickle? Do you mean a spurt? Give me a mental image to think about when you say blood is going to spray as much as, say, an arterial spray where the heart is still pumping it, but you're pressing it out. It's a bit more sluggish, and it will still transfer. That blood that's still caught up in those vessels in that area where he has been injured, that blood will still come out. You're forcing it. Remember, every compression that you generate, you're an external pump. If you're the one administering CPR, you're an external pump now, and you're pumping that

remainder, that residual blood out of the body, and it transfers onto your hands, and essentially, it leaches onto your hands. And everybody can understand, you know, kind of the tackiness of blood. You can't get it off of you. Blood is not a standalone, one-off substance. It's a substance that has multiple components to it. As a matter of fact, if it doesn't continue to circulate, if it just sits on the floor, for instance, after a period of time, what's really fascinating, one of the things that we look at in death investigation is you will actually see, and this is kind of cool, you'll actually see the red blood cells, and you can visually see this. You can see the red blood cells begin to separate out from the serum.

So you'll have over a period of time, and we really haven't fine-tuned this enough to know, you know, if we're going to use this as like a part of assessing post-mortem interval, that is the time since death. But we do know that over a period of time, the red blood cells will migrate away from the serum. And the serum is clear. It's kind of clear. It's got kind of a yellow tinge to it. And you'll see it begin to kind of migrate away because it's no longer mixing.

Just think about that. As the body is pumping the blood through the body and it's being oxygenated and it's traveling throughout the body, it's essentially mixing and staying mixed in that state like that. But after it's out of the body, it begins to kind of separate out into its individual components at that moment in time. So with what you're describing right there, Joe, with the blood separating and the way that it's going to look outside the body, what would it look like on Clintie herself? Because the image looks like somebody drenched her in red paint.

It really does. It looks like somebody dipped a paintbrush in a big bucket of paint and just kind of randomly, you know, wiped it all across her person. And again, that's you got to temper that a little bit, because remember, you know, that image that we're looking at at that moment in time is from above. And it looks like it's from across the way. So, it's that kind of a distance. So, it's hard to appreciate detail.

But when you're up on her in person or when they would have been up on her, that is the authorities, in person, you could visibly see the changes in the blood. It begins to kind of darken as it's contacting various surfaces of her clothing, along her face, her hands, and the nature of it is changing because it's now outside of the body. And there is a color change. Many times that image that they took, I think, was probably early on. And if she were to have been allowed to stay there and you could kind of photograph her over a progression of time, you would see that the color would have changed. Blood is always changing in these scenes and on individual persons. And it's very fragile too. As it begins to dry, it'll begin to flake, crack first. You actually see it cracking

the stained area. And then it'll begin to flake as it's interacting with the world outside of the body. So it's a very dynamic substance. You have to be swift in your assessment. You have to be swift in your documentation. That is particularly, you want to try to get this person photographed as quickly as you can from as many different perspectives as you can, demonstrating all surfaces of their person and try to retrieve that clothing and keep it as intact as you can, because you don't know what's going to be on there. I mean, there's any number of things that can be on that clothing. Chief among them, other than the blood, you know, you can have hair that you would expect to find her hair contained on her clothing.

But this poor man, you know, you would also potentially find his hair. Now, they're in an intimate relationship, so you would expect maybe to find trace elements of his hair that have sloughed off of his body, maybe even his skin. But when you find, say, the blood that's there that has kind of encrusted on that clothing, and you have hair, his hair, caught up in multiple locations, you know that there was in those little dried areas of blood, you know that there's something very dynamic that has gone on. I will continue to beat this drum about time. Time for an investigator is the most precious asset that we possess. And if you can have a documented timeline that marries up with what you believe may have happened, it's like finding gold from an investigative standpoint. And in this case, Jackie, I think that the police have done a fine job in kind of pinning down a rough timeline of these events? The timeline that police have laid out in this investigation

is that Christian Obamsele came back into the apartment around 4.33 p.m. At 4.43, Courtney Clenny calls her mother, and she's on the phone with her mother just over six minutes. At 4.49, Clenny makes a second call to her mother and they spoke until 4.56 p.m. That's a little over seven minutes. So that makes it 4.56 p.m. At 4.57 p.m., Clenny calls 911. So given that timeline, Joe,

what does that tell you about when this assault actually occurred? According to the timeline that the police have released in this case, we have to think about what was Obamsele doing. Well, he had left the apartment and had been gone for quite some time. There was some contact between these two, that is, Clint and Obamsele via phone. And it was during that conversation that apparently he agreed to go and pick up food from Subway, Subway restaurant. He's going to go grab sandwiches. And it's at the moment that he hits the door, when he returns back into the apartment, roughly according to the police at 4.32 PM, there was a fight that ensued. And this happened, you know, rather quickly. And it's curious here that we don't really know, according to the police, what sparked this off at that moment in time.

But something occurred relative to his, maybe it happened when he was going to get the sandwiches. Maybe they had had in that initial phone call before he, you know, robbed. Maybe they had spat. He returns back to the apartment, according to the police. They have put forth this narrative that while Obensele was out of the apartment, she was taping. Now, I don't know if this was for her fan accounts or if there was some kind of issue related to that, but something sparked this off. And it was at that moment in time, there's kind of this brief moment in time that roughly according to the timeline that the police had laid out, it would have happened in an instant, I think, that this attack, as the police have laid it out, would have occurred perhaps with him being completely unaware of what was about to have happened. And I think that that's what they have spent so much time. You know, Jackie, you'd mentioned earlier, they didn't arrest her initially. I think that they've

spent a lot of time trying to sort this out. That actual brief window of time has kind of stumped them to try to get the facts straight in this particular story to try to understand what could have kicked this thing off, what would have initiated such a violent act having taken place. Police say that Clunney told them that she was defending herself. So let's look at the actual injuries that Obumsele sustained. He was stabbed with a six-inch knife. So describe for me, Joe, where he was stabbed, what body parts would have been affected,

why he was not feeling his arm any longer. Explain that for me, Joe. When his wound was assessed, it's quite fascinating, I found, because it's a single injury. Just think about that just for a second. And he's a big guy. If you've never seen an image of these two together, I beg you, check it out online. He's a big, powerful guy. And I'm not saying she's completely diminutive or anything, but there is a size differential here, a significant.

He's well-muscled, big guy. These two people are in pretty good physical condition. And it's with a single blow that he was essentially struck down. The injury that the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner's Office was able to assess on him, you know, stated that the track of this wound, you had mentioned that this is a six-inch blade, and the blade itself has got a serrated edge on it, which gives you an indication. This is probably something you use, you know, in a household. We generally see serrated edges, you know, for steak knives. Okay. This thing penetrated according to Miami Dade ME's office, three inches. Now you've got a six inch blade.

I don't know that listeners understand how much strength it takes to force the entirety of a blade into somebody's body. You're talking about pressing six inches of steel into a human's body where you're passing through connective tissue, muscle, perhaps you're nicking bone at that point in time, and then any kind of organ systems that might be indwelling beneath there. And that doesn't even begin to count the vessels, which in this case is what were compromised. If our listeners, and we've talked about this on Body Bags before with other cases, and it's amazing how it continues to come up. And it came up in my career. This particular vessel, it runs beneath the collarbone. So, if everybody at home, and the initial reports had come out and said it was left side, but it turns out it's right side.

It's the collarbone, which is referred to as the clavicle. And you can feel this at the base of your neck. It's kind of this long tubular bone that is one of the structures that holds our head in place and it holds our shoulders up, this sort of thing. And it's anterior, which means it's on the front of the body. There is a complex of vessels that run beneath the clavicle. And one in particular that's called the subclave, which sub meaning below, the subclave artery or subclavicular artery. And in this case, Obamcelli, this knife was driven through the subclavicular artery, and it wasn't, and this is significant, the track of this thing. And we track knife wounds in forensics just like we do bullet wounds.

They have a path or a track, and the path of this blade passing beneath his clavicle and through the subclavicle is downward. Downward. And that's very important to understand. Why? Well, it is because remember what I said just a second ago. This is a big guy. He's a big man. He's not some tiny little guy.

He's a big man. And here we have his partner here that is significantly shorter than he. So that leads us to believe that perhaps, just perhaps, he was in an asymmetrical position relative to her. Where if what the police are opining, they're putting forward, she would have had to have been in a dominant position above him. And this is called asymmetry, which, you know, things are kind of out of whack. You got one thing that's above the other. And the other thing below is the target area that's being attacked. So the knife would have had to have been raised from above and dropped down.

Okay. Dropped down in a single blow. So what would have happened is, is that the knife itself would have passed beneath the collarbone and tracked through this vessel complex. Cause I'm sure it wasn't just the subclavicular artery that got nicked. There were other little associated arteries that probably got clipped as well. Our body is, is, you know, there know, there's webs of, you know, capillary beds and all these things, you know, they're passing through that are supplying, you know, oxygenated blood and taking away blood that needs to be replenished with oxygen. And you've got all of these little fields of vessels that are being compromised as well.

But the subclave is certainly the most prominent among these. And it's got a tremendous amount of internal pressure that's being placed upon it every time the heart pushes out blood. Keep that in mind. So, you've clipped this vessel that is supplying blood to that particular side of the body. Remember, what did he say? He said that, you know, you could hear him in the background. I'm getting numb. I'm getting numb.

You know, I can't feel my extremities. Well, no, you can't feel your extremities at that point because you're no longer receiving blood flow. He would have also felt very cold as well, at least his perception, his internal thermometer would have been telling him, you know, I'm chilly, I'm shivering. You know, that's one of the reasons you wrap people in blankets that are going into shock and that sort of thing. So here's the important question in this attack, Joe. Courtney Clenny reportedly told police that she first threw the knife and it hit Obamsele, that they were having the argument.

She was acting in self-defense because he grabbed her. He choked her and threw her to the ground. She ran to the kitchen. She grabbed the knife and threw it and hit Obam Selly. Is that possible with what we know now from the Emmy? I got to say this on an aside. When I first heard this, it took me back to a moment when I was a kid. And I used to love Western movies.

One of my favorite Western movies of all time is a classic, Magnificent Seven. And James Coburn was in that movie. And each one of these guys had a specialty and his specialty was throwing knives. And it was amazing. You know, when you're a kid and you see him throw knives and, you know, he's taking down all these bad guys in the movie. And that's somebody that is portrayed with a tremendous amount, a level of skill at doing this. And in my estimation, at least, it would be a one in a million shot in order to do this. First off, you'd have to know how to throw the knife. And there is a very particular way of throwing a knife. And thrown knives are generally throwing knives.

That's actually a thing, throwing knives. These knives are balanced in a very particular way. And then you can have a balanced throwing knife, but if the thrower is not skilled and can target these things, you know, you might as well be throwing pebbles at somebody. It would be a one in a million shot. So, no, I don't see how that is possible. And the fact that you would have to get this knife. Remember what the Emmy said. The Emmy said that you got three inches of penetration.

That's a tremendous amount of power going through this very powerful man's chest. He appears to be very well muscled, particularly in his pec area, you know, in the muscles of his chest. And so you have to pass through that three inches. I mean, you're talking about getting down into the chest cavity at this moment in the time. So, that, I think that that's rather fantastical when you begin to think about possibilities that that could have even have occurred. And, you know, the police would have assessed this. They certainly would have gone to the medical examiner and said, you know, hey, doc, is this physically possible? Can this actually occur? Can you take the knife that we have from the scene and can it be thrown and generate this kind of injury? And, you know, the medical examiner apparently has opined that that's just not the case.

Let me give you a quick word picture here, an example of something. And it's not the same as throwing a knife, but you know, all these bars that are out here where people are, you know, are throwing tomahawks at these wooden targets, hatchets, you know, that they're throwing, you know, people drink and they throw these things. Watch how those people throw those instruments and just how much power it takes to get one of those to stick. And when it sticks, it has to catch on a particular edge, a leading edge of this thing. And then it doesn't go in really, really deep most of the time, but you don't have to, you know, put your foot on it to try to pry it out or anything like that. And how much more so with one of these knives.

And that's what she is putting forth. Another really significant thing here. You know, we talked about the assessment of her and the blood evidence that was on her person. Well, she's indicating, according to the police, that he, Obensele, allegedly attacked her. Well, what does that mean? Well, first off, it means that he attacked her. I don't think it was a verbal attack because she actually says that he attempted to choke her. Again, I go back. This guy's very powerful. Did she tell the police officers that initially when they arrived at the scene? Because if she did, there's got to be pictures of her neck. If he threatened her to the

point where he put his hands on her neck and began to squeeze, in those early moments of that investigation, there would have probably been evidence of that. You would have seen a red, irritated area around her throat, around her neck. And then that would have turned into, classically, what we would call a bruise or a contusion in that area, where he's squeezing his powerful hands around her neck. I'd want to know if the police did that assessment and they were able to conclude that, yeah, there was an attack here that we saw evidence of that or that we didn't see

evidence of that because it's something that would stand out like a sore thumb. If events happened as Clint first alleged to police that she was protecting herself and that she threw the knife and hit him and hit Obumsele, would the blood patterns have been different? You know, I'd have to say that there would be, if you're talking about throwing the knife, first off, I think that the injury itself would appear completely different. And this is why.

You have to assume that, let's think about shooting an arrow. If you're shooting an arrow at a target and that arrow is going downrange, it's staying kind of on a flat plane. There will be slight deviation. It will arc and that sort of thing. But it's kind of on a plane plane, there'll be slight deviation, it'll arc and that sort of thing, but it's kind of on a plane, like an eye-line plane, you know, traveling in that direction. The injury would present completely different. First off, the track itself would not be from above to below, which is what we have according to the medical examiner in this case. It would be from what you would call front to back or anterior tracking posterior going from, you know,

beneath the clavicle so that it's headed toward the shoulder blade, if you will. That's not what's occurring here. As far as blood patterns, assuming that she could throw the knife and it would have stuck into or compromised the structural integrity of that vessel in there, the subclave, I don't know that the blood patterns themselves would have been any different, but the wound track itself would have been markedly different. You would have seen something completely different than what the medical examiner saw at an autopsy. You know, police officers never know what they're walking into. You know, and they always say that, you know, domestic cases, and I agree, I agree, are always the most dangerous situations you can walk into. And look, the cops are not there 24-7 to see what happens in a family dynamic, a relationship dynamic. They're there after the fact most of the time, or they're there when the thing has just come to a complete and total head and people are screaming and yelling and you've got, you know, things being broken

and people are injured and maybe even dead. But in this case, you know, you got to go to the neighbors because it's an intimate environment. We're not talking about this as a standalone structure, you know, where, you know, you've got a white picket fence around the house. No, you're living in an apartment. You're living in an apartment. That means you have people above you, below you, to the left, to the right. They see you in the hallway. And sometimes your best source of information are the people that inhabit the space around you. Well, in Courtney Clinney's case,

the people that came forward were friends and neighbors who reported seeing and hearing a lot of violence coming, not just from the apartment, but throughout the couple's two-year career. And then we have the video of Courtney Clinney assaulting Obumsele in an elevator. Now, keep in mind, again, everyone is innocent until proven guilty. This case has not been adjudicated yet.

We're discussing the evidence that may come forward in a trial. So how is this video, Joe, and witness statements of assault and fights and physical attacks going to play into this case? It's a treasure trove, I think. And when this does go to trial, you're going to see a succession of not just eyewitnesses, but in this particular case, you're going to have earwitnesses. And I think anybody among our listeners that have ever lived in an apartment, that's the biggest drawback, isn't it? You know, you hear people, you know, you got heavy-footed people, you know, that live above you, people that play loud music, people that bang around in the middle of the night when you're trying to, you know, catch some sleep. But the things that always stand out are those sounds that pass through the wall. And, you know, we're sharp enough as human beings to pick up, I think, even in stressors in people's voices, you know, the rise and the fall, the pitch of a voice. And not just that, but what's being verbalized, you know, the threats and all of that stuff will come to light, I think, you know, you top all of this off with this imagery, which I got to tell you, you know, it gave me pause. You know, this elevator image that has been floating around out there.

And, you know, when you see this thing, the capture, the video capture that they have, you know, Cleeney, you know, first comes into frame. And it looks like she's, you know, dressed in maybe a bra or sports bra. I can't really tell in a pair of, you know, like sleeping pants or something like this. And she's it's the elevator itself looks like something out of Star Trek. You know, it's a nice it's like high tech kind of thing. And there's this big touchpad wall that's brightly lit and she's frustrated. You can see her just like pounding on the board itself, trying to get it to respond. And almost immediately, Obamsele comes around the corner

and walks in and he attempts to assist with the board. And it's at that moment in time, you see her strike out at him. Again, you know how I was talking about earlier, how you can see kind of a physical difference between Obamsele and Kalini. He's a big guy. But in that image, he kind of comes off as like this General John. I don't know how I would react. She's striking him. I mean, she's hitting him.

She grabs his hair, pulls his head back a little bit. You can see he kind of winces. And guess what he does? He puts his arm around her and kind of secures her adjacent to his body so that she can't strike him. But I never see him in that video image raise his hand to her. I never see him put his hands around her throat. I never see him bang her off the wall. And so I think that as that is being played before the court, I think that it's going to really tell a tale. And I think that the jury will certainly have enough information to chew on in that event.

How do you distinguish between this he said, she said scenario? You have Courtney Clenny, who has said more than once that he was abusive and that he assaulted her. And then you have video evidence and his friends and hers as well saying, well, we saw her hitting him. He didn't hit back, but we saw her hitting him. How do you weigh that in the testimony? Well, you know, and I think that probably counsel, and I've seen this happen in court cases I've covered, they famously say, particularly the prosecution, they'll say, you know, you can say anything about the dead, you know, they can't defend themselves at that moment in time. And I think from an evidentiary standpoint, when you hear about putting forth the narrative that she had been attacked, one of the questions that would be brought up is, where's the evidence of attack? And I'm talking about how is that physically demonstrated over this two-year period? You know, okay, you say you've been attacked.

You say that you've been assaulted, that you're in fear of your life, and all those things that they say. How is that demonstrated? How has it manifested itself physically over that same period of time? And if that is what you move forward with, if that's the narrative that you put forward, you know, from the perspective of a defense, defense is going to have to, you know, put that out there. They're going to have to demonstrate that, you know, on this date, she went to the clinic. And look, I mean, this is something that we do in forensics all the time, you know, particularly when we think about abuse cases. And my mind always drifts back because they're the most defenseless among us, our young children, you know, and that's when we have child fatalities, for instance, you know,

we will go back historically and look at the course of treatment that this child may have had. You know, they went to multiple medical facilities that were treated for this and that, you know, fractures or, you know, contusions, concussions, split heads, you know, where you've got these big lacerations where they had to be sewn up. And, you know, that kind of gives you these investigative breadcrumbs along the way. So, you know, again, we're not there, you know, as investigators when these things happen, we have to go back after the fact and piece it together. And if you don't have that, and I think that that's what makes this a difficult sell. Again, Courtney Clenny is accused of stabbing her boyfriend, Christian Obumsele. And she is charged with murder in the second degree with a deadly weapon.

Again, she has not been convicted. Everyone is innocent until proven guilty. So now this is up to a jury. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. body bags. This is an I heart podcast.