More than eight years ago, the lover of his wife and an accomplice fatally stabbed the celebrity hairdresser Fabio Sementilli on his patio Woodland Hills in what was done to look like an invasion of home that went wrong.
The stylist’s daughter found her bloody body, called 911 and has desperately tried to save him – in vain.
Now, after two and a half months of testimony, a jury must decide whether the woman of the dead man, Monica Sementilli, orchestrated her murder, or was fooled by her jealous lover.
“This accused was the brain behind her husband’s horrible murder,” said Los Angeles County MP. Atty. Beth Silverman said in the end of the arguments this week. “This is a case of betrayal. This is a case on greed. This is a case on lust.”
Silverman argued in court that evidence shows that Monica Sementilli’s objective was to win 1.6 million dollars in life insurance and avoid complications to divorce and start a new life with the lover Robert Baker, a condemned sex offender and a former porn star who has become the racquetball coach.
The jurors must decide if Monica Sectionlli, 51, is guilty of murder with special circumstances, a conspiracy to commit murder and murder for financial purposes.
“We are not because she is a horrible mother,” Silverman told jurors. “We are here because she is a killer.”
While she cried the death of her husband – a frame of the Wella hairstyle giant – Monica Sectionlli sexté with Baker, even sending her nudes of herself the funeral weekend in Toronto, said Silverman.
She reminded the jurors that, beyond the proof of a financial gain, hundreds of encrypted messages between the widow and her lover, there was also an accomplice to the murder who said to the jurors that he had no doubt about who called the shots in the massacre.
Christopher Austin – who was found guilty of second degree murder in the murder of Fabio Sementilli – told jurors that he and Robert Baker had stabbed the hairdresser to death after his wife left the couple’s door unlocked.
Testing as a star witness of the accusation, Austin said that he had never heard the accused directly, but Baker told him that Monica Sementilli wanted her husband “disappears”.
“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 defense lawyer Leonard Levine, when the case closed, said on several occasions that Austin had never heard a single instruction from Monica Sementilli, and had been fooled by Baker. “There is nothing connecting Monica to the murder, except that Austin saying that Monica called Baker,” said Levine.
The only mischief of his client was a matter, Levine to the jurors told. “For that, she is responsible and will live with it for the rest of her life,” he said. “But adultery is not murder … All she did was to protect the case, not to hide the murder,” said Levine.
The prosecutors, he said, had attached themselves to the light details of the case, but that was not proof of murder. He said that the jurors had to consider Baker’s testimony:
“I murdered it because I wanted it,” Baker told jurors. “She had nothing to do with that.”
The reason he killed the husband, said Baker, was that he was tired of sharing her and living a life of secret links. Baker is now serving a perpetuity imprisonment without the possibility of conditional release for murder. Austin obtained a romantic agreement, said Levine, and Baker had nothing to lose by telling the truth.
However, in counter-examination by the accusation, Baker had trouble explaining why he had provided several versions of the murder, including statements in a seven-page letter he gave to Monica Sementilli after agreeing not to challenge the murder of January 23, 2017.
Baker said that he and Austin had found the hairdresser in a terrace and had stabbed him several times with an eight -inch hunting knife. The hairstyle’s body had seven wounds by sharp force on her face, jaw, neck, chest and thigh, as well as two minor injuries on his left arm.
Baker said that at the time, he did not realize that Austin had also stabbed Sementilli. They fled into the car of the hairprow of the hair and threw the knife into a hole and threw their clothes near a bowling alley.
Baker admitted that he had tried to hide Austin’s involvement in murder. It was not until last October that the authorities arrested Austin, an Oregon probation officer.
The murder was not their first attempt to kill the hairdresser, said Austin. Monica Sementilli, would have sent a message to Baker that she sent her husband to the store, and Austin tried in vain to target him while he was getting to take away.
Baker said that for months, he and Monica Sementilli have secretly connected to his home and in vehicles. They also constantly considered a message, exchanging sexual content, even following the death of her husband. They went to Las Vegas and Florida together.
Silverman asked Baker to explain why, on the day of the murder, he and Monica Sementilli both deleted encrypted messages on the Viber app on their phones. Baker replied: “It was Glitch.”
After their arrest in June 2017, the pair was intended to discuss the phone and messaging application, and if the authorities could penetrate and read their messages following the murder.
“They destroyed evidence, they deleted evidence, they tried to hide the planning behavior … so that they could have this new future together,” said Silverman in closing pleadings.
Baker also admitted to having bought burners, one of which in Monica’s bag when the LAPD arrested them in his Ford Mustang GT six months after the murder.
CHAPS DE MUGS NO Date of Monica Sementelli and Robert Baker.
(LAPD)
Silverman has shown a photo taken in the wake of Fabio Sementilli, where Baker can be seen in the area where murder has occurred. Monica Sementilli is seen a few meters from the image. Silverman asked Baker if he had slipped him from the burner to wake up and denied it.
But Silverman pointed out that Monica Sementilli had used the phone a few days later in Canada during funeral procedures in Toronto – the hometown of Fabio Sementilli.
Baker also admitted by questioning that the widow had sent her naked photos of her with her wedding ring always on the finger. “Everyone is crying differently,” said Baker.
While the Maison’s master bedroom was ransacked, the Rolex watch of $ 8,000 nylles remained on the wrist, spilling the interest of detectives, said LAPD investigators. Video surveillance captured two hooded men who jogging to the house before the 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.
Silverman presented evidence that she has argued showed that Monica Sementilli looked at a live flow from the region shortly before the murder to make sure that Baker had a clear path to her husband. During the fence pleadings, Silverman noted that when Monica Sementilli discovered her daughter’s job interview ended early, she sent her to pick up new prescription glasses to delay her return home.
Levine and Blair Berk, co-defense lawyer throughout the trial, described their client as a victim of Baker. They told the jurors that there was no statement, no text, no registered phone call which had linked their client to the murder and also was “due to believe that Robert Baker did not do it.
In his last words to the jury, prosecutor Heather Seggell has resumed many prison conversations recorded between lovers. Separated and behind bars, the couple continued their relationship through calls to three using a third -party number that connected them, was like coded “kite” messages. They continued to speak, undress and watch the other touch, the jurors heard. But they also talked.
When the police arrested them and placed them together at the back of a police car, the video recording system captured Monica Sementilli say to Baker: “deny everything and do not speak”.
California Daily Newspapers
