The spouse of a star hairstylist will spend the remainder of her life in jail for having her lover kill her husband in what was purported to look like a house invasion theft gone mistaken.
Monica Sementilli , 53, was sentenced to life with out parole Monday for the brutal stabbing of her husband, Fabio Sementilli , 49, of their Woodland Hills dwelling eight years in the past. A jury in April convicted her of homicide and conspiracy to commit homicide for masterminding the slaying that occurred on their Woodland Hills deck, the place one in all their daughters discovered him wounded in a pool of blood.
Los Angeles County Superior Court docket Decide Ronald Coen, earlier than saying the sentence, rejected a bid by Sementilli’s authorized group to get her 25 years to life in jail, labeling her the “mastermind on this conspiracy to commit homicide.” Coen stated her lover, who carried out the assault, “didn’t have the intelligence to plan the brutal, well-thought-out slaughter.”
Fabio Sementilli suffered a number of wounds to his face, jawline, neck, chest and thigh, and the truth that his $8,000 Rolex watch was left on his wrist when he was killed left detectives puzzled.
Blood from the crime scene was quickly linked to Robert Baker, a convicted intercourse offender and former porn star who started an affair with Monica Sementilli after serving as her racquetball coach at a West Hills health membership. Whereas prosecutors have painted Sementilli because the “mastermind” behind the slaying, as she stood to realize $1.6 million in life insurance coverage payouts, Baker took the stand in the course of the 2½-month trial and insisted he killed the hair mogul for love.
Loretta Picillo, Fabio’s sister, advised the choose earlier than the sentencing, “The individual accountable wasn’t a stranger however the girl we had welcomed into our household for over 20 years.
“We handled her like household and she or he betrayed all of us,” stated Picillo, one in all eight relations of the hair mogul to deal with the court docket. “Monica walked out understanding full properly that inside minutes her husband Fabio could be viciously attacked and held down. Solely a demon may orchestrate the homicide of a loving husband and savagely time it so her personal daughter would come dwelling and discover her father’s lifeless physique mendacity in a pool of blood.”
Baker was beforehand convicted of Fabio Sementilli’s homicide and likewise sentenced to life with out parole. At her trial, he insisted he acted with out his lover’s data. “I murdered him as a result of I wished her,” Baker testified throughout her trial. “She had nothing to do with it.”
In the course of the trial, L.A. County Deputy Dist. Atty. Beth Silverman offered video proof that confirmed Monica Sementilli watching a stay feed of the realm shortly earlier than the assault to make sure Baker had a transparent path to her husband. Mitzi Roberts, a veteran murder detective with the Los Angeles Police Division, additionally testified that Sementilli and Baker exchanged 95 messages by way of an encrypted messaging app known as Viber on the day of the killing and 180 messages the day earlier than.
Whereas Sementilli denied all wrongdoing and publicly grieved her husband — an government on the hair care firm Wella — she was concerned in a torrid affair with Baker. The pair sexted throughout her husband’s funeral, in keeping with Silverman, who stated the brand new widow even despatched nude photographs to Baker in the course of the service in Toronto.
Baker’s confederate, Christopher Austin, additionally testified for the prosecution and insisted Baker advised him Sementilli had directed her husband’s homicide. Austin, a former Oregon probation officer, stated he by no means spoke to Monica instantly, however Baker made clear his lover wished her husband “gone.”
“The whole lot he did, he did after he obtained a textual content message, which advised me he was speaking to her through textual content message,” Austin testified. “I didn’t hear him speak to her on the cellphone … however all the pieces occurred in sequence.”
Protection legal professional Leonard Levine insisted, “Adultery will not be homicide. … The whole lot she did was to guard the affair, to not cowl up the homicide.” He known as Baker a “Svengali,” saying that Sementilli made the “greatest mistake of her life” in turning into concerned in an extramarital affair with him.
