Crime Stories with Nancy Grace - Body Bags with Joseph Scott Morgan: Murder or Self Defense Shocking New Info - Only Fans Model Covered in Blood

Episode Date: October 6, 2024

OnlyFans and Instagram model, Courtney Tailor, is rich and famous. She is  living in a luxury high-rise in Edgewater, Miami, Florida and has banked over $3 Million dollars in the two years leading up to the death of her boyfriend, Christian Obumseli.Her real name is Courtney Clenney and she is charged with second-degree murder with a deadly weapon in the death of Christian Obumseli, 27, in her high-rise Miami-area apartment on April 3, 2022.  Clenney claims she killed Obumseli in self-defense. Joseph Scott Morgan takes an up-close look at recently released information about what happened that fateful night and provides new insight into the death of Christian Obumseli. Was it self-defense or murder?          Transcript Highlights  00:00:00 Introduction of case - why would you throw your only weapon? 00:02:00 A single stab wound by a thrown knife 00:06:37 Courtney Clenney and boyfriend fought 00:10:56 Funny stuff about throwing knives 00:15:26 911 call, victim says "I'm going to die" 00:19:43 Clenney claims she through kitchen knife from 10 feet away 00:24:16 Discussion of laptop, text messages, email 00:28:26 The Love of Money 00:30:55 Courtney Clenney, drunk, approaches teen in parents neighborhood 00:33:23 Conclusion – portent of things to comeSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

You're listening to an iHeart Podcast. Body Facts with Joseph Scott Moore. Over the course of my life, I've met some kind of interesting people along the way. I love meeting people to a certain degree, particularly that come from different backgrounds. One of my friends that I actually met him just by chance and formed a friendship with him was a former special operations person. It's about as far as I'll go. And he's just this salt of the earth kind of guy.

But one of his, part of his expertise in special operations was what they call CQB. He was close quarters combat. And he became an instructor. And he was particularly good with edged weapons. And, which I was always fascinated by the little boy in me, you know, I was fascinated by that. And I asked him one time, I said, do you guys ever learn how to throw knives?

And he looked at me and he said, you know, I thought you were a smart guy. He said, that's one of the dumbest things you can do. Because if you have a weapon in your hand, why would you ever throw it away? Today, we're going to do an update on a case that involves an edged weapon. It involves a single stab wound.

And the weapon was apparently wielded by a young lady that claimed that she threw the knife and happened to strike the victim in one of the most critical areas in the human body. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. Dave, I took you out in the backyard right now. I've got a big oak tree back here. You think you could, if I hand you a knife, you think you could make it stick in the tree? Just wondering. No, I don't think I could do that, Joe.

Yeah. I wondered the same thing. I'm so glad you started the show with this about the knife throwing. I've always thought, unless you're actually one of these people who has like a whole pack of them, and they're different sizes, and they're made for throwing, why would you throw a knife? Why would you ever? Two movies. Desperado with Danny Trejo. He played a knife-wielding assassin in that, and he had a vest with tiny throwing knives on it. And what was the guy's name it was

james coburn in the magnificent seven and he carried a knife down the back of his shirt and he would wheel this thing and throw it and it's really cool to see yeah i think it's really cool but the the odds the odds that you are going to be able to fatally, you know, to bring about a catastrophic event with this knife. Kevin Costner and the bodyguard. That was another one where he threw the knife at the guard. That was funny. Yeah, yeah, it was. But it's all fictionalized.

And I know that there are people out there. Well, I know people that throw knives. Not in combat, you know. not if you're in a fight why would you throw away your tool you're i know it's it's it's it's pretty pretty bizarre so when and we've covered this case before as a matter of fact we covered it i think a couple of years ago now this is how long this has been going on we're talking about courtney clinty right um by the way yeah she is one of these new age models where we used to make jokes about people and career choices how rich people would oftentimes claim that they were a photographer or a writer because those are a couple of occupations you don't have to prove anything you can claim it and nobody you know has a way of saying are you any't have to prove anything you can claim it and nobody you know

has a way of saying are you any good do you have any you know no i'm wealthy anyway this is just what i claim is an occupation but we have this whole genre of internet models and in this particular case courtney clinney wasn't her name courtney taylor on yeah I think so. And then, of course, OnlyFans. Right. It's the OnlyFans. Yes. We've had a number of stories of young women on OnlyFans. And look, I don't care what a person does to make money.

Yeah. To consenting adults, I'm libertarian all the way when it comes to that. So whatever you do, fine. But we have a number of cases of young women who have no other means of support except for what they produce online. Yep. And it just weirds me out that they can make so much money at such a very young age. Oh, it's a tremendous amount. Well, you know, just down the road from us, I guess it's in the suburb of Birmingham, we had the…

Yeah, Cat West. Yeah, Cat West. I mean, literally, that was right down the road from us where that occurred. And remember, she was found dead out by the curb. And she was involved in this business with her husband and beautiful lady, a mother. And, of course, he was charged and subsequently tried and convicted. But she was the model that died. In this case, we've got a model that is charged with a homicide of a

big dude. Of her boyfriend. Yeah. To give you a little background on it, she was involved in a relationship where there was a lot of police intervention. There were a lot of scraps between these two. And to be honest with you, Joe, I have seen a couple of them. In particular, one fight, I'm going to put in fight and air quotes, between Courtney Xplenty and her boyfriend, Christian Obumsele. Obumsele? Obumsele.

Obumsele. All right. Between Courtney and Christian, and she was the aggressor from, from jump street. She gets on the elevator and she is, she is mad. She's hitting her and he comes on and he's trying to calm her down. You can't hear any audio.

You can only see the body, you know, how they're working with one another. And he's like, totally hands off. Be cool. You know, come on,

stop it. Calm down. That kind of thing. And she's trying to hit, pull. She's trying to pull his hair, scratch him. one another and he's like totally hands off be cool you know come on stop it calm down that kind of thing and she's trying to hit pull she's trying to pull his hair scratch him she is terrorizing this guy who is a big man and he is choosing to not do anything other than try to calm her down and she in that moment i seen this dude in that moment he was a saint oh my god i gotta i gotta tell you i don't know how he restrained himself because she was really, she was hammering on this guy. I know. And apparently, that's not the only incident that had occurred.

Is that correct, Dave? That's what happened many times, Joe, many times. And so when police were actually called on this last time, and I'm glad you mentioned it because her claim, her claim is that they were in a fight. Now, she claims to be the victim of domestic violence. She claims a lot of things. And this man, Christian Obamsele, does not have the opportunity to defend himself or his honor or his character because he's dead.

Because she claims that she threw a knife and it just accidentally hit him. It was a mistake. It was an accident. I wasn't trying to hurt him. I wasn't trying to do anything. It just, it happened to hit him. And Joe, I don't know about you, but you told us at the very beginning, if you're in a fight for your life, the one thing you don't do is get rid of your weapon. So how does she throw a knife and end up hitting her boyfriend in such a way that it could cause his demise? That's the big thing, because this knife was a kitchen knife. Okay, let me back up and just say that there are knives out there that are created for throwing they do exist

i have seen them i've handled them i've never thrown one and they have a particular balance to it and there is truly i hate to say that it's an art form but i'm sure to the people that do this regularly it is an art form not quite the same thing but i mean just you realize how many bars there are now that have the axe throwing thing and it's it's competitive um i kind of want to do it i've never done it just to throw an axe and get it to stick and you know in the target downrange there's all kinds of things that go into this as far as the biomechanics of this, how the weapon is held initially. We're not even at the point of throwing yet. So do you hold it by the tip of the blade, mid-range of the blade,

or do you hold it by the handle? And then what arm angle are you tossing this thing? And the people that throw them, if you do like an overhanded throw, the knife actually rotates. It'll rotate through the air. It kind of spins on an axis. And then I've always thought, well, how do they get this to do this and then predict that it's actually going to embed in the target? And then when it embeds, there's no guarantee that it's going to have sufficient depth to stick. And if you're throwing it at a human,

now you're talking about somebody that is moving. You're talking about positionality because most people don't stand still unless you're in a carnival, you know, and they've got somebody against the wall. And they're holding a balloon in their teeth. For those of you who are a little bit older than Joe and I, there was an actor named Ed Ames. He actually played a big Western guy on TV. And one of his things in the TV show was throwing axes. And he was on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show where he did a demonstration of throwing the axes.

And one of the axes that landed right between, they had a drawing of an outline of a man and it landed right between right in the guy's crotch. Yeah. And he said, I had no idea you were Jewish. There you go. And the thing is,

is that that's the only time you see things like this, Joe, you don't see them in real life. No, you don't. And you made me reflect back to the movie, the jerk with like this, Joe. You don't see them in real life. No, you don't. And you made me reflect back to the movie The Jerk with Bernadette Peters. And she says to Steve Martin, I've learned a new trick today, honey. And they've got all this money.

And he says, yeah, let me see. And she says, do you have a balloon? He says, wait, hang on. Yeah, I just happen to have one. He sticks it in his mouth. And he says, now make sure you just happen to have when he sticks it in his mouth she and he says now make sure you throw it real hard so it'll stick back to the story at hand it's it's one of those things where she is saying that she's taken a kitchen knife in a heated argument.

And this is what she has told the police. And of course, this information is passed along to the medical examiner. And she wielded this knife in a manner that she threw it at him now when she says that she threw it at him this is where lawyers can dance because did you throw it at him with intent you know that sort of thing so they're going to go round and round about this what the medical examiner though that did the examination in florida stated and opined about this they said the doctor said uh very specifically that this is not something consistent with um with someone throwing a knife and having it stick. All right. First off, the knife penetrated, the knife penetrated, uh, roughly eight centimeters. Um, and just let me

give you an idea, um, as to, uh, as to that, that kind of depth so that everybody understands. It's just over, that would be, eight centimeters would actually be just over three inches in depth. Now, everybody within the sound of my voice right now, find your right collarbone, otherwise known as clavicle. All right. So your right collarbone and drop down. You can anywhere along it, but just find the mid portion of the shaft of this. Drop down about

half an inch. All right. When you get to that half an inch mark, that in, is just beneath that area is where one of the major vessels in your body rest. And it is very critical. This is not like you're nicking some little secondary vessel throughout your body. This is where the right subclavicular artery rests. And it is a major blood supply. And let me tell you how major it is. It shares a common trunk with the right carotid vessel. And, of course, the right carotid vessel is the vessel that one of the vessels,

the right and the left carotid arteries, supply the brain with blood. And so this it shunts off and supplies the periphery with blood. And there's a lot of pressure behind it. So if you clip that vessel, if you clip that vessel, you're going to bleed out really, really quickly. The reason I'm giving this little anatomy lesson here is when you think about her relationship with this big man, how are you going to target that specific area? How much energy do you think that this tiny woman, and she is tiny, particularly compared to Christian, how does she generate enough energy to throw this thing and have it not just kind of stick superficially,

maybe like a needle in a sub-Q shot that you get injection. We're talking three inches into the body, Dave. Three inches, a kitchen knife. All right. This thing is buried beneath his collarbone, goes into this right subclave artery. And buddy, unless you had a staff of cardiothoracic surgeons with the nurses and all of the instruments, you ain't living. You're not living.

And what was really tragic, I remember hearing a recording, it seems. They had this. I think it's a 911 call where you can hear Christian in the background. What's going on? What's the line? This is a non-operative. Don't put it at the end of your emergency. What's going on? What's going on? in the background. 3101 I can't feel my arm 3101 I can't feel my arm ma'am

ma'am what is the address what's that 3131 3131 northeast please God please come see my wife that's the first part of that 911 call Joe and you can hear Please, God, please come to my house.

That's the first part of that 911 call, Joe. And you can hear you've got Courtney Clinton and the 911 dispatch. But you can hear in the background, you can hear Christian saying, I'm going to die. I can't feel my arm. What does that mean? He is fading and fading fast. Now, they wound up taking him from the scene to the hospital. And, of course, by the time they get to the ER, it's over with. I mean, they pronounced him dead there.

So when the police, you know, actually begin to work the scene, when the detectives work the scene, all that's left is Courtney Claney. And she is super saturated with blood. The thing that stands out to me most, there was a still image of her that was taken because, dude, this apartment that they lived in, I don't know about everybody else, but I know enough about you and I, Dave, we could never afford to live in this place. I mean, it is a swanky pad. And it's, you know, in a high rise in South Florida. And there's an image of her where she is seated and it's through a glass.

And you can see she's got blood all over and there's blood all over the floor, which is consistent. Because one of the things that we look for in blood pattern interpretation, and I know we've talked about this, but so our friends know there's something called arterial spray. There's so much pressure behind this particular vessel that as the heart is pumping, okay, and remember, this thing is truncated off of the off of the aorta and then it splits after it comes off the aorta one side goes becomes carotid the other is subclave you've got this pressure that's coming out he would have sprayed blood all over the place

and all over her so she's in close contact with that um it they this is a very and i think back, you talked about how passive he was in the elevator. And I really wonder if that history translates to this event. He's not thinking, certainly she's not going to bury the knife in my chest. I'm going to talk her down. Brother, it didn't happen. It didn't gonna talk her down brother didn't happen it didn't happen like that it didn't happen at all joe that's why i mentioned the elevator because that was just a couple of weeks before you know this happened police were called out there many times many times and there was a history of uh violence between the two of them

that based on his size and based on her size and based on her alleged use of alcohol and drugs and not totally being because when she was actually arrested she was arrested in hawaii while she was there to undergo treatment for alcoholism and drug addiction and i want to go back for just a minute because in watching the video on the elevator, I watched it knowing the end result, knowing that this man died at her hand. She never denies that. She does not deny that she did this. Okay. But we have to believe that she claims he threw her to the ground in their apartment and that she grabs a kitchen knife she's 10 feet away and she throws it at him and it hits his collarbone just below his

collarbone as you explained joe which by the way i had no idea what you told me today i had no idea that's what we were talking about in terms of blood right i didn't know that was a deadly spot i would have thought kind of like shoot yourself through the arm and claim the bushy haired stranger did it. I didn't know that a shot, I didn't know a knife wound there would do that, but it was plunged three inches upper range of like, there are other muscular structures. But if you think about your pectoral muscle, that's right there, you're going to pass through that. And here's the thing, Dave, there is, you know, your ribs actually begin, let's see, your first rib kind of doesn't really communicate, but it approximates the collarbone. And people don't realize your ribs kind of go up that high, but they do. And then they begin to wrap around the body.

So not only is she below the collarbone, but she would have had to have slipped this in between the collarbone and the first rib and go through the pectoral muscle. So it's not just that it's three inches into his body if you take a look at christian's uh form he's very robust i mean you can tell dude has spent time on the weight bench he's he's i mean he is in shape you know he's he's a big robust dude and uh so she's got to penetrate all of that the reason i'm saying that is that there would have had she with with her size would have had to have generated a tremendous amount of uh of energy in order to do that and you know what creates energy in human beings, rage. I'm thinking, you know, adrenaline's pumping. Things have gotten out of hand at this point. And for whatever reason, she decides to attack him. And, you know,

the medical examiner at this point has stated that, you know, that this is inconsistent. Now, this is not, she's merely charged. It's not gone to trial yet. I mean, we're still, what, two years afterwards, I think at this point in time, approximately. And this thing still hasn't made it to trial yet. It will. But this is going to be one of the questions they're going to ask, and I can predict it, of the pathologist. Doctor, you have made the statement in this court document, and we have a copy of it it where you say that this is not consistent with a thrown knife. And I think the doctor has also come out and said, well, I've never seen a thrown knife case, but they're going to get him on the stand and they're going to talk about this

and say, well, how can you make that judgment? You know, you put forth this. She's saying that she's admitting, you know, just like you said, that she did it. She has. And this is the method that I employed, you know, and I'm sure that they can say or put the thought in the jurors minds that, hey, look, she was is a fit of rage. She was just throwing the knife to try to get him off of her, make him stand down. And then they're going to come to the forensic pathologist and they're going to say, well, if you've never worked one of these cases, how do you know that it couldn't happen? Is it within the realm of possibility?

And the doctor will have to say, I guess it is. Wow. Possible. So that's, it's interesting that that seed has been planted. But, Dave, I understand that along with with this reveal, there are actually some other elements to this case that that need to be addressed and have need to be updated at this point in time. There have been a number of issues between the prosecution and the defense as there always are is they battle back and forth for what evidence is going in and what is staying out and one thing came down to the laptop that was owned by christian obamselli and courtney clinney because it was what she claims as community property and it was in their apartment where they both lived and in trying to access the password that christian used to i don't know what they were

trying to get to one can assume but that doesn't do any good but the prosecution was able to find information communication between courtney clint Clinton's parents and the attorneys as they were trying to figure out different passwords that Christian may have made up and used to access this computer. Prosecutors got a hold of these communications, these emails, these text messages back and forth and found out what was going on and said, hey, wait a minute. You can't, you know. And so they charged the parents with trying to break in and charge them with a burglary charge for trying to break into this laptop. And they're like, wait a minute.

That's information that is not shareable. That's attorney client privilege. You can't have that. And a judge just ruled that the prosecution did violate attorney-client privilege by accessing this communication between Courtney Kliney's parents and the attorney. And so now this whole batch of evidence the prosecution was banking on having, they no longer have. Wow. That's a big blow. And let me tell you why. Because this goes to, I think, remember how I mentioned this high dollar apartment that they're in? Oh, yeah.

Or condo, however you want to frame it. I'm just old country boy, I don't understand these things necessarily, but its value is astronomical. Well, there's a certain amount of money that you have to have in order to maintain this lifestyle. And, you know, you mentioned early on, you know, about how much money comes in. Well, they're essentially, and you talked about community property, they're essentially in a business relationship. It's not just a romantic, they're essentially in a business relationship. It's not just a romantic thing. Right. They're in a business relationship. So, any of that data that was contained on that hard drive could potentially give more clues, more insight.

And for us, you know, in forensics, we use digital forensics to go back in time. It's amazing, you know, with all of these devices that we carry around with us, whether it's a laptop or maybe an old fashioned CPU at home or or certainly our phone. You think about that reveals quite a bit of history, know dates times exchanges of money or intake and here's the other thing um there are sex videos as well i think they're you know that are related to i guess only fans and maybe other things we have no idea but But, man, I mean, that's all you're saying. That's all going to be excluded. Anything that was contained on that CPU is gone now. Yeah, they're going to have all of it out. The thing is, imagine this, Joe.

Courtney Taylor. That's Courtney Clinney. The name Courtney Clinney went by online at OnlyFans and Instagram. She had 2 million followers on Instagram. That's making bank. This is the kind of money that you don't make at this age. This is the kind of money, unless you inherit it, you don't traditionally make this kind of money that she was pulling down. And the thing is, Christian Bozzelli, he was a computer guy.

He was big into cryptocurrency. And for those of you who have seen what has happened in that world in the last 10 years, there have been crypto billionaires created where they spent 10 cents to buy however many shares of some crypto. And now they sold for 45,000 a share kind of thing. I mean, this is a crazy time in the world of cryptocurrency if you got in and out at the right time. But yeah. Yeah. And so, you know, the old adage of, you know, money being the root of all evil, which I don't necessarily adhere to evil. Love of money.

Yeah. The love of money. Thank you. You're right. You're absolutely right. And, you know, it's it is a tool, and the thing about it is if the prosecution were to, say, have to move forward with this case and there is evidence that could have been on that hard drive and this was a – the root of this may have been, to borrow that phrase, the root of, could have been some kind of financial distress or discrepancy or argument that was going on. Man, that's a foundational part to the case. And what a train wreck that could potentially be.

Something else that came out, Joe, after the death of Christiana Mumsili. Now, many of us have already seen the police video of Courtney Clinton direct right after this. You know, you mentioned the blood. You mentioned, you know, how she was acting right afterwards. This was not a planned event. You know, it was in my mind's eye. I'm just an amateur at this. I don't I'm not a cop.

I'm not a detective or a lawyer. But the way she was acting afterwards, she admitted, I did it. It was an accident. We were fighting. Okay. Gotcha. Two months after this, eight weeks after she is so bloody and standing there in front of the cops saying, I just killed my boyfriend. Oh, my goodness.

Well, she didn't know he was dead as they wheeled him out. But everybody else did. They knew he's not going to make it. I couldn't from the amount of blood he was losing, which I'm so glad you you explained that earlier joe because i've talked to this a number of people about how could one knife wound there at your collarbone really cause all this and i'm so thankful for that because i didn't know but two months later courtney is uh with her parents in texas and in this texas neighborhood regular not the flor high rise she's living in, but just a regular family neighborhood, she actually gets, Texas, which is the Austin area. They respond to an incident with Courtney Clinton eight weeks after the murder of her boyfriend or 18 year old boy said he was walking in the neighborhood when he was approached by a woman who was walking her dogs and who told him she was drunk.

She approaches. This is what the father says. Jovan is the kid's name. He's 18 years old. His dad says she approached him, what my son said, visibly intoxicated. And she's like, hey, what's your name? The woman is Courtney Clinney, who the teen didn't know. She requested that he walk home with her. He agrees because he's 18 years old and she's hot.

And she starts making sexual advances towards him. He's 18. He's not ready for this. He was thinking, I'm going to walk this cute drunk girl home. But she takes it a step further and a step further and a step further to the point where she's putting physical moves on him she doesn't know this guy joe they just met walking on the street she's walking her dogs she's saying kiss me and he's like no i don't know you if you don't kiss me i'm gonna burn your house down holy smokes that's what courtney clinty told 18 year old. She just met in her parents neighborhood. I'm going to burn that blank down.

So that's why they called deputies. The team, you know, wasn't really interested in doing anything else with her. And when the cop showed up, Clinney, Courtney Clinney, then freaks out. She shoves his father, physically attacks him. He shoves her back, calls police. Deputies show up. She's freaking out. This became a total brouhaha between Courtney Clinton, a dad, and his 18-year-old son in their nice, quiet family neighborhood because she's out drunk, walking dogs, and hitting on an 18-year-old guy.

So there you have it. Her parents. Yeah, I'm wondering how this is going to factor in and if this will be factored in in the case in Florida, more than likely it won't. But if you're looking at this case to try to understand perhaps behavior patterns, this is kind of, I think that it's kind of significant, perhaps. And this is not a one-off event. Because if you go back, obviously, to that violent night that ended Christian's life, and then extend back to all these other domestic beefs that occurred at that location, including that thing that is witnessed on the CCTV in the elevator, it could be a portent of things to come.

I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is Body Bags. You're listening to an iHeart Podcast.