More than eight years after the famous hairdresser Fabio Sectionlli was stabbed to death on the terrace of his house of the Woodland Hills, one of the two killers told a jury this week that the widow of the stylist “wanted him to dead”.
Christopher Austin – Who was found guilty of second degree murder in the murder of Fabio Semetelli – told jurors that he and Robert Louis Baker had stabbed the hairdresser to death after his wife, Monica Semetelli, left the door of the house of the couple.
Testing as a star witness of the accusation in the trial for murder of the wife, Austin said that he had never heard the accused directly, but her lover Baker told her that she wanted her husband to “disappear”.
“Everything he did, after having received an SMS, who told me that he was talking to him by SMS.” Austin testified. “I did not hear him talk to him on the phone … but everything happened in the sequence.”
Monica Sectionlli’s face showed little emotion when Austin spoke, but she looked at him intensely.
Austin revealed that Baker called Monica Sectionlli as her “daughter” and said that she was in a “abusive” relationship and that “the Sementilli Fabio).” But after stab wounds on January 23, 2017, Baker told Austin that murder was for “insurance money”.
Un dated mug chaps of Monica Sementilli and Robert Baker.
(LAPD)
Prosecutors allege that Monica Sectionlli “was the brain” of the plot to kill her husband, a Canadian and executive hairdresser of the Wella hairstyle giant. His goal, he said, was to win 1.6 million dollars in life insurance and avoid divorce complications. Baker, 62, is a condemned sex offender and former porn star who met Monica Sectionlli as a racquetball coach in West Hills the fitness and has become her lover.
Austin’s testimony has been the most overwhelming to date to involve the woman. Baker and Monica Sectionlli admitted that they were in love. But since Baker pleaded guilty to the first degree murder of January 2017 and obtained a term for life without parole, he insisted that Monica Sectionlli was not part of the plot.
Last year, Baker admitted that he had killed the hairdresser of celebrities, leaving him in a pool of blood on a rear terrace in what was initially considered a flight to the invasion at home. A second accomplice who fled with Baker in the Porsche du hairdresser was unknown until last October when the authorities arrested Austin, an Oregon probation officer.
Until this arrest, Baker’s position that he alone acted made the pursuit of Monica Sectionll very difficult.
In court, Austin gave the first story by blow by the murder, saying that they were mounting a street bordered by trees in Woodland Hills and arrived at the couple’s door. “He said … She’s going to let the door unlocked,” said Austin.
Before entering, Baker said to Austin: “On the account of three, you will hold it back.” They then crossed the kitchen and found the hairdresser seated on a rear patio, where his wife told Baker that he had often made business calls.
Austin testified that the dead has never seen them coming while Baker opened a door on the patio. “He opened the door and he held his mouth so that he couldn’t cry,” Sanglota Austin. “And he started stabbing him.” The men then fled to the Porsche, which Baker knew in the garage.
A minute after the departure of men, the girl Isabella Fabio discovered her father’s bloody body and called 911, where an operator guided her through desperate but failed attempts to save him.
His mother cried as the recording of the 911 appeal was played in court.
Austin said they knew the layout of the house because it had been months ago. He met Monica Sementilli at La Fitness in Woodland Hills, and she invited Baker and Austin to her house, where she served pizza and showed them the rear patio.
The murder was not their first attempt to kill the hairdresser, prosecutors said; The day before, Monica Sementilli would have sent a message to Baker that she sent her husband to the store, and they tried without success to target him.
During the counter-examination, the defense lawyer Leonard Levine explained that Austin explained several times that he had never heard of Monica Sectionlli directly about the murder plot. He also explained to Austin how he had changed his story since he was initially placed in police custody and told the police that they had only blurring the hairdresser.
Levine also asked several times if Austin had been offered an agreement, to which Austin replied no. Austin risks 16 years in prison during the conviction next month for second degree murder and personal use of a knife.
During the opening declarations, Blair Berk, lawyer for co-defense, had “absolutely no reason, no desire that she wanted her husband Fabio dead”. Berk said there was no proof of conspiracy from his client. “There is no declaration, no text, no phone call recorded,” she said.
Berk said the evidence would reveal that the widow “had an affair with Robert Baker, and it turned out that Robert Baker had decided to kill her husband”. Berk said that his client had been “dressed to believe that Robert Baker” did not do so.
Initially, when Lapd responded to the home and found that Sementilli had stabbed to death, the investigators considered him the work of so -called Knock burglars who torment parts of the San Fernando valley. Sementilli had seven injuries by sharp force in the face, jaw, neck, chest and thigh, as well as two minor injuries on his left arm.
While the house’s master bedroom was ransacked, the $ 8,000 rolex watch from the hairprow on the wrist, spilling the interest of detectives, said LAPD investigators. Video surveillance captured two hooded men who jogging to the house before murder. Subsequently, the men left for the Porsche of Sementilli and were recorded on another surveillance camera when they abandoned the vehicle 5 km away.
About a month after the crime, the detective of the LAPD, Ryan Verna, testified that Baker’s DNA was linked to blood evidence during the crime. Baker’s DNA had already been captured after being found guilty of obscene and lascivious driving with a minor in 1993 and forced to register as a sex offender.
Investigators also noticed that the killers had deleted the home video recording system, which was not easily found. While the investigators have linked the widow and the former porn star together, an expert in forensic technology said that he had recovered instructions in Baker on how to access the domestic safety DVR.
Prosecutor Beth Silverman presented evidence that argued that Monica Sectionlli looked at a live flow from the region shortly before the murder to ensure that Baker had a clear path to her husband.
LAPD DET. Mitzi Roberts testified that the woman was so distracted that she almost missed the exit from Target, showing jurors a security video on a large audience screen. She said that Monica Sementilli and Baker had exchanged 95 messages via the Viber encrypted application on the day of the murder and 180 messages the day before.
After the arrest of the pair in June 2017, Monica Sementilli told Baker in a van Nuys Lapd prison that she was “afraid” that they would find viber on her mobile phone.
It was Roberts who finally connected Austin to the crime after seeing a Facebook message published three days after the murder. She attached the pair by phone and banking. Baker gave Austin money to buy a ticket to steal anchorage in Los Angeles before the murder, and a roll of gold coins after the murder.
For weeks, investigators from the LAPD flight homicide division watched the widow and the baker while they were becoming suspicious, observing them together in cars, bars, a comedy club and during a luxury trip to Las Vegas.
Investigators testified that some 200 sexually graphic and videos of Monica Sementilli and Baker were recovered in various electronic media belonging to the pair. Some images have been taken while Sementilli was in Toronto for her husband’s funeral, Jurors’ investigators told investigators
After the detectives pulled the pair in the Black Mustang of Monica Sectionll, with Baker behind the wheel, the police placed them together in the back of a police car. The video recording system captured Monica would have said to Baker: “deny everything and do not speak”.
During this arrest, a T-Mobile prepaid mobile phone was found in his bag. It was one of the two that Baker bought just a few days after the murder, an investigator told jurors.
Even during their years behind bars, they continued to communicate with letters. A supervisor from the Sheriff prison said that Baker had also tried to leave coded kite – a collaborating method of the communication of prisoners using binary code manuscript on paper – in a staircase of the courthouse that the widow used after him. The jurors saw a baker video leaving something hidden in a staircase.
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