More than eight years after famed hairstylist Fabio Sementelli was stabbed to death on the patio of his Woodland Hills home, one of the two killers told a jury this week that the stylist’s widow “wanted him dead.”
Christopher Austin — who was convicted of second-degree murder in the killing of Fabio Semetelli — told jurors that he and Robert Louis Baker stabbed the hairstylist to death after his wife, Monica Semetelli, left the door to the couple’s house unlocked.
Testifying as the prosecution’s star witness in the wife’s murder trial, Austin said he never heard directly from the defendant, but her lover Baker told him she wanted her husband “gone.”
“Everything he did he did after he got a text message, which told me he was talking to her via text message.” Austin testified. “I did not hear him talk to her on the phone … but everything happened in sequence.”
Monica Sementelli’s face showed little emotion as Austin spoke, but she did stare at him intensely.
Austin revealed that Baker had referred to Monica Sementelli as his “girl” and said she was in an “abusive” relationship and “wanted him [Fabio Sementilli] gone.” But after the stabbing on Jan 23, 2017, Baker told Austin the killing was for “insurance money.”
Undated mug shots of Monica Sementilli and Robert Baker.
(LAPD)
Prosecutors allege that Monica Sementelli “was the mastermind” of the plot to kill her husband, a Canadian hairstylist and executive at the hair-care giant Wella. Her goal, he said, was to pocket $1.6 million in life insurance and avoid the complications of getting a divorce. Baker, 62, is a convicted sex offender and former porn star who met Monica Sementelli as a racquetball coach at West Hills LA Fitness and became her lover.
Austin’s testimony was the most damning yet to implicate the wife. Baker and Monica Sementelli have admitted they were lovers. But since Baker pleaded guilty to the January 2017 first-degree murder and got a life term without parole, he has insisted Monica Sementelli was not part of the plot.
Baker last year admitted that he killed the celebrity hairdresser, leaving him in a pool of blood on a back patio in what was initially thought to be a home-invasion robbery. A second accomplice who fled with Baker in the hairstylist’s Porsche was unknown until last October when authorities arrested Austin, an Oregon probation officer.
Until that arrest, Baker’s stance that he acted alone made the prosecution of Monica Sementell very difficult.
In court, Austin gave the first blow-by-blow account of the killing, saying they walked up a tree-lined street in Woodland Hills and arrived at the couple’s doorstep. “He told me… she is gonna leave the door unlocked,” Austin said.
Before entering, Baker told Austin, “On the count of three, you are going to hold him down.” They then walked through the kitchen and found the hairstylist sitting on a back patio, where his wife told Baker he often conducted business calls.
Austin testified that the dead man never saw them coming as Baker opened a door to the patio. “He opened the door, and he held his mouth so he couldn’t scream,” sobbed Austin. “And he started stabbing him.” The men then fled to the Porsche, which Baker knew was in the garage.
A minute after the men drove off, daughter Isabella Fabio discovered her father’s bloody body and called 911, where an operator guided her through desperate, yet failed attempts to save him.
Her mother cried as the recording of the 911 call was played in court.
Austin said they knew the layout of the house because he had been there months before. He met Monica Sementilli at the LA Fitness in Woodland Hills, and she invited Baker and Austin to her home, where she served pizza and showed them the back patio.
The slaying wasn’t their first attempt to kill the hairstylist, prosecutors said; the day before, Monica Sementilli allegedly messaged Baker that she was sending her husband to the store, and they tried unsuccessfully to target him.
During cross examination, defense attorney Leonard Levine made Austin explain repeatedly that he had never heard directly from Monica Sementelli about the murder plot. He also made Austin explain how he had changed his story from when he was initially taken into custody and told police that they intended only to rough up the hairstylist.
Levine also asked repeatedly if Austin had been offered a deal, to which Austin answered no. Austin faces 16 years in prison at sentencing next month for second-degree murder and personal use of a knife.
During opening statements, Blair Berk, co-defense counsel, had “absolutely no reason, no desire that she wanted her husband Fabio dead.” Berk said there was no evidence of her client plotting. “There is no statement, no text, no recorded phone call,” she said.
Berk said the evidence would reveal the widow was “having an affair with Robert Baker, and it turned out that Robert Baker had decided to kill her husband.” Berk said her client was “duped into believing that Robert Baker” didn’t do it.
Initially, when LAPD responded to the home and found Sementilli stabbed to death, investigators considered it to be the work of so-called knock-knock burglars who plagued parts of San Fernando Valley. Sementilli had seven sharp force wounds to his face, jawline, neck, chest, and thigh, along with two minor wounds on his left arm.
While the home’s main bedroom was ransacked, the hair mogul’s $8,000 Rolex watch remained on his wrist, piquing the interest of detectives, LAPD investigators testified. Video surveillance captured two hooded men jogging up to the home before the slaying. Afterward, the men drove away in Sementilli’s Porsche and were recorded on another surveillance camera as they abandoned the vehicle 5 miles away.
About a month after the crime, LAPD Detective Ryan Verna testified that Baker’s DNA was tied to blood evidence at the crime. Baker’s DNA had previously been captured after he was convicted of lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor in 1993 and forced to register as a sex offender.
Investigators also noticed the killers had removed the home’s video recording system, which wasn’t easily found. As investigators tied the widow and the former porn star together, a forensic technology expert testified that he recovered instructions to Baker on how to access the home security DVR.
Prosecutor Beth Silverman presented evidence that she argued showed Monica Sementelli watching a live feed of the area shortly before the killing to ensure Baker had a clear path to her husband.
LAPD Det. Mitzi Roberts testified that the wife was so distracted that she nearly missed the exit from Target, showing jurors a security video on a large courtroom screen. She said Monica Sementilli and Baker exchanged 95 messages through the encrypted app Viber on the day of the killing and 180 messages the day before.
After the pair were arrested in June 2017, Monica Sementilli told Baker at a Van Nuys LAPD jail that she was “afraid” they would find Viber on her cellphone.
It was Roberts who eventually connected Austin to the crime after seeing a Facebook message posted three days after the killing. She tied the pair together through phone and bank records. Baker gave Austin money to buy a ticket to fly from Anchorage to Los Angeles before the killing, and a roll of gold coins after the slaying.
For weeks, LAPD Robbery Homicide Division investigators surveilled the widow and Baker as they became suspects, observing them together in cars, bars, a comedy club, and on a luxury trip to Las Vegas.
Investigators testified that some 200 sexually graphic photographs and videos of Monica Sementilli and Baker were recovered from various electronic media belonging to the pair. Some of the images were taken while Sementilli was in Toronto for her husband’s funeral, investigators told jurors
After detectives pulled the pair over in Monica Sementell’s black Mustang, with Baker at the wheel, officers placed them in the back of a police car together. The video recording system captured Monica allegedly telling Baker, “deny everything and don’t talk.”
During that arrest, a prepaid cellphone from T-Mobile was found in her purse. It was one of two that Baker bought just days after the killing, an investigator told jurors.
Even during their years behind bars, they pair continued to communicate with letters. A sheriff’s jail supervisor testified that Baker also tried to leave coded kites — a surreptitious method of inmate communication using handwritten binary code on paper — in a courthouse stairwell that the widow used after him. Jurors saw a video of Baker leaving something hidden in a stair rail.
