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More than eight years ago, his wife’s lover and accomplice fatally stabbed Fabio Semenrili, a celebrity hairstylist, on his Woodland Hills patio.
The stylist’s daughter finds a bloody body called 911 and desperately tries to save him.
Now, after two and a half months of court testimony, the jury must decide whether Monica Sementi, the wife of the dead man, had coordinated his murder or been fooled by his jealous lover.
“The defendant was the mastermind behind her husband’s horrible murder,” said Los Angeles County Deputy Bureau. Atty. Beth Silverman said in his final discussion this week. “This is an example of betrayal. It is the case of desire. It is an example of desire.”
Silverman argued in court that Monica Semenrilli’s goal was to pocket $1.6 million in life insurance, avoid complications from divorce, and to become a racquetball coach at LA Fitness with convicted sex offender and former porn star lover Robert Baker.
The ju judge must decide whether 51-year-old Monica Cementeri is a crime of murder in special circumstances and a crime of conspiracy to commit murder and murder for financial gain.
“Because she is a scary mother,” Silverman told the ju judge. “She’s here because she’s a killer.”
According to Silverman, Public mourned her husband’s death.
She reminded the ju umpire that beyond evidence of financial gain, hundreds of encrypted messages between the widow and her lover had an accomplice in the murder, who told the unsuspecting ju umpire about who called the shot of the murder.
Christopher Austin, convicted of second-degree murder in the murder of Fabio Semenrilli, told the ju judge that he and Robert Baker stabbed a hairstylist to death after he and Robert Baker left the couple’s door.
Testifying as a witness to the prosecutor’s star, Austin said he had never heard of the defendant directly, but Baker told him that Monica Sementi had “got” 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.
However, defense attorney Leonard Levine repeatedly said in closing the case that Austin had never heard a single instruction from Monica Semenrilli and was deceived by Baker instead. “There’s nothing to tie Monica to a murder case. Austin says that Monica is called Baker,” Levine said.
His client’s only wrongdoing was the situation, Levine told the ju judge. “So she’ll be responsible and live with it for the rest of her life,” he said. “But adultery is not murder… everything she did was protect the case, not to hide the murder,” Levine said.
Prosecutors lived in the troublesome details of the case, he said, but that was not evidence of the murder. He said the ju-degrees should consider Baker’s testimony.
“I killed him because I wanted her,” Baker told the ju judge. “She had nothing to do with that.”
Baker said the reason he killed his husband was because he was tired of sharing her and living the life of a secret liaison. Baker is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for murder. Austin has signed a lover’s deal, Levine said, and Baker had nothing to lose by telling the truth.
However, under cross-examination by the prosecutors, Baker struggled to explain why he provided multiple versions of the murder, including a statement in a seven-page letter he gave to Monica Sementi on January 23, 2017, after agreeing to file a lawsuit against the murder.
Baker said he and Austin found a hairstylist in the patio area and stabbed him several times with an 8-inch hunting knife. The hairstylist’s body suffered seven sharp, forceful wounds on his face, chin, neck, chest and thighs, and two small wounds on his left arm.
Baker said at the time he didn’t realize that Austin had stabbed Semenri either. They escaped to the hairy mogul’s car, dumped the knife in the hole, and threw clothes near the bowling alley.
Baker admitted that he tried to hide his involvement in Austin’s murder. It wasn’t until October last year that authorities arrested Austin, an Oregon probation officer.
The murder was not their first attempt to kill the hairstylist, Austin testified. Monica Semenlili is said to have sent Baker a message that she was sending her husband to the store, and Austin attempts to target him when she gets take-out food.
Baker said he and Monica Semenrilli were secretly connected to their location and vehicle for several months. They also exchanged sexual content and sent constant messages, even in the wake of her husband’s death. They went to Las Vegas and Florida together.
Silverman asked Baker to explain why he and Monica Semenrili deleted the encrypted message on the Viber app on their phone on the day of the murder. Baker replied: “It was glitch.”
After being arrested in June 2017, the pair discussed phone calls and messaging apps and heard whether authorities could break in and read their messages in the aftermath of the murder.
“They destroyed the evidence, they tried to remove the evidence, hide their planned actions… so they could bring this new future together,” Silverman said in his final argument.
Baker also approved the purchase of the Burner phone. One of them was in Monica’s wallet when LAPD arrested them in the Ford Mustang GT six months after the murder.
Undated mug shots of Monica Semenrili and Robert Baker.
(LAPD)
Silverman displayed photos taken at the Wake by Fabio Semenrilli. Here you can see Baker sitting in the area where the murder took place. Monica Semenrili can be seen in the image just below her feet. Silverman asks Baker if he let her slide Burner’s phone at Wake, and he denied it.
However, Silverman pointed out that Monica Semenrilli used the phone in Canada during a funeral lawsuit in Toronto a few days later.
Baker also admitted, questioning that the widow had sent him a naked photo of her still on her fingers. “Everyone laments differently,” Baker declared.
While the home’s main bedroom was looted, Sylists continued to pique the detective’s interest, with a $8,000 Rolex watch remaining on his wrist, LAPD investigators testified. Video surveillance showed two hooded men jogging home and filming before the murder. The man then drove on a Cementuri Porsche and was recorded on another surveillance camera when he abandoned the vehicle five miles away.
About a month after the crime, LAPD detective Ryan Verna testified that Baker’s DNA was linked to blood evidence for the crime. Baker’s DNA was previously captured after being convicted in 1993 of perverted conduct with a minor and forced to register as a sex offender.
Investigators also noticed that the murderer had deleted the home’s video recording system, which was not easily found. When investigators tied the widow with the former porn star, forensic technology experts testified that he had restored instructions to Baker about how he could access the home security DVR.
Silverman presented evidence that Baker claimed that she showed Monica Semenrilli was watching a live local feed just before the murder, in order to ensure a clear path to her husband. During the closing discussion, Silverman pointed out that when Monica Semenrilli learned that her daughter’s employment interview had ended early, she sent her to pick up new prescription glasses to delay her return home.
Throughout the trial, co-defense attorneys, Levine and Blair Burke portrayed their clients as Baker’s victims. They had no statements, no texts or recorded calls linked to the jury.
In the final words of the ju judge, prosecutor Heather Segel played many recorded prison conversations among his lovers. Behind the bar, the couple continued their relationship through a three-way call using the third-party number that connected them. They continued talking, stripped for each other and saw others touching themselves, the ju-degree heard. But they also spoke.
When officers arrested them and placed them together behind the police car, the video recording system told Baker that Monica Cementili “denies everything and don’t talk.”
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