A Texas woman will spend the next 10 years behind bars after plotting to kill a Mississippi business owner.
Ashley Grayson, 35, was sentenced after being convicted of a murder-for-hire plot. According to court records, Grayson ran a notable online business and got into an argument with a Southaven woman who ran a similar business. Although the two had never met in person, Grayson accused the woman of creating fake social media profiles to criticize her business.
Grayson, formerly known online as Ashley Massengill, amassed a loyal social media following and parlayed the audience into a multi-million online course business. She built a reputation for flashing luxury cars, purchasing mansions, and making claims such as earning $1 million in 40 minutes online through her “digital course blueprint.”
In August 2022, Grayson reached out to a woman she had previously worked with in Memphis, which is just across the state line from Southaven. She offered the woman and her husband a “business opportunity” to kill the Southaven woman and two others. Grayson requested they also kill her ex-boyfriend and a Texas woman who made negative social media posts about her. She offered the couple $20,000 for each murder.
In September 2022, the Memphis woman video-recorded a call to Grayson where Grayson confirmed she wanted the Southaven woman killed as soon as possible and offered an extra $5,000 for the murder to happen within a week.
Later, the Memphis couple sent Grayson a picture of police lights from an unrelated incident under the guise that they had attempted to kill the Southaven woman but were unsuccessful. They demanded and received $10,000 from Grayson for the “attempt.”
The FBI and other law enforcement agencies began to investigate the case and by July 2023, a grand jury in the Western District of Tennessee returned a one-count indictment against both Grayson and her husband, Joshua. While Joshua was acquitted during a week-long trial in March 2024, Grayson was convicted for her role in trying to get the Southaven woman killed.
“This was a twenty-first-century crime where online feuds and senseless rivalries bled into the real world,” Acting U.S. Attorney Reagan Fondren said. “The defendant tried to hire someone to murder a woman over things that happened exclusively on the internet. Fortunately, no one was physically hurt on this case, but the victim and her family still felt a severe and emotional impact as the result of the defendant’s actions. The proactive response from the investigating agencies and our prosecutors prevented an even more serious crime from occurring.”
Grayson appears to have deleted her official social media accounts, though some accounts posing as her continue to post old videos in which Grayson made lavish purchases and pointed the audience toward her digital creator business.
After a decade in prison, which will be served without the possibility of parole, Grayson will go into three years of supervised release. This was the maximum sentence for the crime at hand.
