TikTok influencer Gabbie Gonzalez, her father, and her ex-boyfriend pleaded not guilty in a California courtroom Monday to charges they plotted to kill Why Don’t We singer Jack Avery with a paid assassin recruited on the dark web.
Los Angeles County prosecutors say the trio conspired to kill Avery amid a bitter and prolonged custody battle over Gonzalez’s seven-year-old daughter with the boy-band singer. Gonzalez, 25; her father, Florida lawyer Francisco Gonzalez, 59; and Hawaii-based surf instructor Kai Faron Cordrey, 26, appeared in court while out of custody on varying conditions. Each is charged with the same three counts of attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and solicitation of murder.
“Yes, your honor,” Gabbie told the judge when asked whether she agreed to postpone her next hearing until Nov. 18. She otherwise remained silent during the proceeding and declined to answer media questions afterward.
“There are two sides to every case, and thus far, the public has heard only one. We are confident that when the evidence is presented, tested, and placed in its proper context, a very different picture of Gabriela and this case will emerge,” her lawyer, Elliot R. Zarabi, said in a statement after the arraignment.
In a prior court filing asking that Gabbie be allowed to see her daughter while the case is pending, Zarabi argued his client “played a comparatively limited role in the alleged conduct,” 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 to the court. 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.”
Prosecutors, meanwhile, say Gabbie and her family viewed Avery as “the obstacle to their desired control” over the child. Gabbie and her father’s alleged 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.
Lawyers for Cordrey and Francisco did not immediately respond to Rolling Stone’s requests for comment on Monday.
Prosecutors allege that between October 2020 and May 2021, Gabbie “repeatedly discussed wanting Jack Avery dead,” and that she enlisted Cordrey to help. They say Gabbie 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, Gabbie’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 Gabbie 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.
More than a year later, on Oct. 20, 2022, Gabbie 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.”
If convicted as charged, all three defendants face 25 years to life in state prison, prosecutors say.
A few days before the wild case was made public in May, Avery sought a civil restraining order in Los Angeles County Family Court, saying he had known about the alleged murder-for-hire plot since 2021. “I was notified by the FBI that a hit man was hired to kill me,” Avery wrote in a declaration.
The singer said a detective told him that Gabbie had been arrested on suspicion of attempted murder and was in police custody. Their daughter had been placed with a foster family, he said, and he rushed to pick her up. He claimed Gabbie’s relatives had been calling and texting him “relentlessly” demanding to know where the child was. Two women he identified as Gonzalez’s friends allegedly showed up at his Southern California home, banging on the door and ringing the bell while looking for the girl.
He said the FBI warned him “it was not safe” to be around Gabbie and that he remained “very aware of the safety risks” whenever he arranged visits with his daughter.
“I continued to travel to see [my daughter] and had to learn to manage my own fears and anxiety,” Avery wrote in his petition for a civil restraining order against Gabbie. “I did so because of how important [my daughter] is to me and out of serious concern for her safety and well-being.”
