Courts and Crime
Gabbie Gonzalez’s ex-boyfriend testified that "she was freaking out" after an FBI raid, wanted to leave the country, and told him "that if they opened up her phone, that she would be in prison"
The TikTok influencer accused of trying to hire a hit man on the dark web to kill singer Jack Avery sat just 10 feet from her alleged target in a Los Angeles courtroom Tuesday as another former boyfriend testified against her, describing her alleged hatred of the pop star tied to their bitter child custody dispute.
Cody Clayburn testified that he met the influencer, Gabriela Gonzalez, in June 2021, around the time prosecutors allege she was conspiring with her father and another former boyfriend, Kai Cordrey, to pay an “expert hitman” in cryptocurrency to murder Avery. Clayburn said he knew nothing of the alleged plot until November 2022, when FBI agents raided the Hawaii home he shared with Gonzalez and seized electronic devices. After the agents left, he confronted Gonzalez, he testified.
“I asked her that night what was going on, and she said that her ex, Kai Cordrey, was obsessed with her and wanted to help carry out a plan to get rid of Jack, and that there had been a Bitcoin payment. And then she was freaking out, wanted to leave the country, and she said if they opened up her phone, that she would be in prison,” Clayburn testified by video at the hearing in downtown Los Angeles.
Under questioning by Avery’s lawyer, Clayburn claimed Gonzalez talked about possibly fleeing to South America, though he could not recall whether she named a specific country. “She was just very overwhelmed,” he testified. “She was just worried.”
Gonzalez, 25, watched the testimony from one end of a long courtroom table, with Avery seated at the other end and their lawyers between them. Wearing a lavender blazer over a matching light purple T-shirt, she remained silent as her lawyer informed the judge she would invoke her Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and not testify.
Gonzalez, her father Francisco Gonzalez, and Cordrey were all arrested in May and charged with the same three counts of conspiracy to commit murder, attempted murder, and solicitation to commit murder. Each has pleaded not guilty. If convicted as charged, they face 25 years to life in state prison, prosecutors said.
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Tuesday’s civil court hearing marked the first time Avery and Gonzalez appeared in court together since her arrest. The hearing, set to continue Wednesday, will determine whether Avery, a member of the 2010s boy band Why Don’t We, can extend his domestic violence restraining order against Gonzalez and whether she can have contact with their seven-year-old daughter, either through video calls or supervised visits, while her criminal case proceeds. In court filings, Gonzalez’s lawyer said she has had no contact with the child since she was taken into custody and released on bond.
In other testimony, Clayburn described the turmoil that followed the FBI raid. He told the judge that Gonzalez soon began making arrangements to foster another young girl around her daughter’s age without telling him. He said child welfare officials in Hawaii eventually placed a girl named Isabel in their home with his consent, but he claimed Gonzalez left the state just two weeks later.
According to Clayburn, Gonzalez’s mother traveled to Hawaii to help care for the two girls while Gonzalez was working as a coach at a summer surf camp. He claimed that Gonzalez and her mother then abruptly left for Florida with Avery’s daughter without telling him when they would return. Child welfare officials then placed Isabel in Clayburn’s sole custody, he testified. When Gonzalez returned about two months later, he said, officials removed Isabel from the home altogether.
Clayburn further testified that Gonzalez and her family routinely disparaged Avery in front of his daughter. He said Gonzalez would turn down the volume on her phone during Avery’s FaceTime calls with the girl and would “constantly bad-mouth Jack.”
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“It bothered me as like it wasn’t fair to [the daughter] to constantly be exposed to that, to make her feel like when she’s with her dad, she’s in trouble or doing something wrong,” he said.
Clayburn’s mother, Paige Clayburn, testified as the second witness. She said she also saw Gonzalez lower the volume during a video call with Avery. When asked why, Paige testified that Gonzalez told her she hoped the girl would “get bored,” put down the phone, and walk away.
Paige further told the court that she saw Gonzalez transport the girl in cars without a car seat. She then described a contentious custody exchange in which Gonzalez allegedly tried to pull the child by her legs from Avery’s arms after becoming upset that he had arrived with a friend. Paige said Avery remained calm during the confrontation, which contributed to her growing doubts about Gonzalez’s claims that he was the problem.
In a statement to Rolling Stone, Gonzalez’s criminal lawyer, Elliot Zarabi, questioned why Avery didn’t seek a domestic violence restraining order years ago. In his petition for the order, Avery told the court that he was first notified by the FBI in 2021 “that a hit man was hired to kill me.”
“Mr. Avery is using this situation to reignite his career as best as he can, and he’s using his daughter to do that,” Zarabi said. He said his client has no problem keeping her distance from Avery, “she just wants to be able to see her child. That’s all she wants. A child that’s been with her, pretty much, her entire life, except for maybe twice a year here and there. She just wants to see her child in this situation.”
Avery’s lawyer did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Rolling Stone. At one point during the hearing Tuesday, Avery, 27, turned around and blew a kiss to a woman who accompanied him to the hearing and sat in the front row. He wore black jeans, a white collared shirt, and a green sweater.
In a prior court filing asking that Gonzalez be allowed to see her daughter, Zarabi argued that his client “played a comparatively limited role” in the alleged murder plot, with the “primary operational aspects” of the alleged scheme purportedly carried out by Cordrey.
“Much of the evidence against Ms. Gonzalez derives from statements made by Cordrey himself, a charged co-defendant, with every incentive to shift blame and minimize his own conduct,” Zarabi wrote. He claimed prosecutors lacked “direct evidence showing that Ms. Gonzalez hired a hit man, negotiated a killing, transmitted cryptocurrency, communicated with undercover operatives, or directly engaged in operational planning.”
But prosecutors say Gonzalez, her father, and Cordrey viewed Avery as “the obstacle to their desired control” over the child. Their conduct “escalated from family-court litigation and efforts to discredit Jack, to surveillance and attempted third-party intimidation, and ultimately to a funded murder-for-hire plot designed to remove Jack permanently,” Deputy District Attorney Alexander Bott wrote in a July 22 court filing obtained by Rolling Stone.
Cordrey’s lawyer did not respond to a request for comment on Tuesday. Francisco’s lawyer, Karen L. Goldstein, said in a statement that the case “has been sensationalized by the prosecution, who has repeatedly made arguments that are exaggerated or simply untrue.”
“This weaving of a biased, and often false, narrative appears to be an effort to discredit Mr. Gonzalez’s character and to deny him his right to a fair trial,” she said. “What the prosecution claims happened, and the truth of what actually happened, are two very different things. We will continue to pursue justice for Mr. Gonzalez and trust that a jury will see the truth.”
Prosecutors allege that between October 2020 and May 2021, Gonzalez “repeatedly discussed wanting Jack Avery dead,” and that she enlisted Cordrey to help. They say Gonzalez and Cordrey discussed using bitcoins on the dark web and how they hoped to make the hit “appear to be an accident.”
According to the felony complaint, Gonzalez’s father allegedly sent Cordrey $10,000 in April 2021 to find and hire someone to kill Avery. Prosecutors say Cordrey moved the money into a Gemini cryptocurrency account and began communicating with a dark web murder-for-hire account under the alias “LizardKing69.” On May 22, 2021, Cordrey allegedly identified Avery as the target, provided a Los Angeles address for his location, and said Avery could be killed by whatever method was easiest, including a shooting or staged incident, the complaint states.
The account administrator allegedly demanded another $4,000 on June 4, prompting Cordrey to go back to Francisco for more money. Days later, Cordrey allegedly pressed for Avery to be killed within a couple of days, the complaint states.
Prosecutors say the plot continued into September 2021, when an undercover FBI agent posing as a hit man spoke with Cordrey by phone. Cordrey allegedly identified Avery as the target and discussed payment and proof of death. In a later call, Cordrey allegedly said Gonzalez wanted Avery killed and that Francisco could pay for it. Prosecutors say Francisco then contacted the undercover agent using the password “Bullrun” and discussed a previous bitcoin payment.
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More than a year later, on Oct. 20, 2022, Gonzalez allegedly spoke with Cordrey on a recorded call about the supposed hit man and “how to respond to the threat of exposure,” according to the complaint. She also allegedly said she could talk to her father because “he had been handling most of it.”
Gonzalez’s lawyer said Tuesday that Francisco might be called as a rebuttal witness for his daughter on Wednesday.