Monica Cementi was found guilty of sending her lover to kill her husband, celebrity hairstylist Fabio Cementiri, with brutal stab wounds at the couple’s gorgeous Woodland Hills home eight years ago.
Sementilli, 51, breathed and shed tears, clutching her hand in her mouth as the verdict was read. She will face life in prison without the possibility of parole in the sentence after being convicted of murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Fabio Sementilli was found dead in the couple’s home in January 2017, and police initially pointed to a “knock-knock robber” who was killed in a failed home break-in and was then plundering an expensive home in the San Fernando Valley. The hair magnate suffered multiple wounds on his face, chin, neck, chest and thighs. However, detectives were confused as to why a $8,000 Rolex was left on Cementuri’s wrist at the crime scene.
The blood found at the scene was linked to former porn star Robert Baker, a sex offender who was soon found guilty. Prosecutors portrayed Cementuri as the “mastermind” behind the murder as he stood to win $1.6 million in life insurance payments, but Baker rose to his feet at a two-and-a-half-month trial claiming he killed a big go of hair for love.
“I killed him because I wanted her,” Baker testified last month. “She had nothing to do with that.”
Baker was previously convicted of Fabio’s murder and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Video evidence presented by Deputy Dist. Atty. However, Beth Silverman saw the area’s live feed just before the murder and showed that Monica Cementilli was watching the live feed of the area to ensure Baker had a clear path to her husband. Veteran LAPD murder detective Mitzi Roberts also testified that Monica Sementili and Baker exchanged 95 messages via 180 messages the day before with an encrypted messaging app called Viber on the day of the murder.
Monica Semenlili publicly grieved her husband, an executive at hair care company Wella, publicly denied all wrongdoing, but she was involved in a passionate incident with Baker. According to Silverman, the pair took the sixth face during their husband’s funeral.
Baker’s accomplice, Christopher Austin, also testified about the prosecutors last month, with Baker claiming that Monica had directed the murder. Austin, a former Oregon probation officer, said he never spoke directly to Monica, but Baker revealed that he hopes his girlfriend “leave” her husband.
“Everything he did after he received the text message said he was talking to her through text,” Austin testified. “I didn’t hear him talk to her on the phone…but everything happened in turn.”
Defence counsel Leonard Levine argued that the prosecutor focused too much on the grumpy details of his client’s issues.
“Adultery is not murder… Everything she did was not to hide the murder, but to protect the case,” he said.
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