To hear convicted murderer Robert Baker say it from the witness stands, his ex-love Monica Sementi was not part of a plot to fatally stab her famous hairstylist husband and make the house invasion seem wrong.
“I murdered him because I wanted her,” Baker recently told the ju judge at a famous murder trial in Los Angeles. “She had nothing to do with that,” a star defense witness testified before a packed downtown LA courtroom.
Monica Sementilli pleaded not guilty to special circumstances and murder charges of conspiracy.
He said the reason he killed his ex-lovers’ husband was because he was tired of sharing her and living a life of secret communication. Baker is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for murder.
More than eight years after Fabio Cementilli was stabbed to death on the patio of his Woodland Hills home, Baker did his best to strengthen his one-time lover’s defense.
However, under cross-examination by the sub-ward. Atty. Baker’s Beth Silverman struggled to explain why he provided multiple versions of the murder, including a statement in a seven-page letter he gave to Monica Semenrilli after agreeing to contest the January 23, 2017 murder.
“In this case, did you change the story over and over to fit the evidence?” Silverman said.
Baker admitted to his intentional attempt to hide the identity of his accomplice, Christopher Austin. “I lied about the second person,” Baker told the protector.
The convicted murderer claimed he lied to the letter – and initially to Monica Semenrilli’s defense team – because these accounts were “unofficial.” He always said he told the truth under the vow “when I sworn it.”
In a trial that lasted more than 50 days, the prosecutor allegedly was the “mastermind” of a conspiracy to kill her husband, a Canadian hairstylist and executive of German hair care giant Wella. Her goal was to pocket $1.6 million in life insurance and avoid complications from divorce, prosecutors argue.
Baker, 62, met Monica Semenrilli, a convicted sex offender and former porn star and became a lover of her as a racquetball coach at West Hills LA Fitness.
Asked by Silverman on the day of the murder, Baker replied why he and Monica Semenrilli deleted the Viber app encrypted on their phones. After their arrest, the two discussed phone calls and messaging apps and heard whether authorities could break in and read their messages in the aftermath of the murder.
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)
In court Friday, Silverman displayed photos taken at the wake of Fabio Semenrilli. There, you can see bakers 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.
Baker’s version of the event contradicted the testimony by Austin, a star witness for the prosecutor. Austin escapes murder with Baker with the dead man Porsche. This is a detailed authorities that didn’t find Oregon probation officer Austin until October when he arrested him.
Austin pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Fabio Semenrilli and spent 16 years living there. He recently told the ju judge that the widow stylist “want to die.” He testified that after Monica Semeteri left the couple’s door and unlocked the lock, he and Baker stabbed a hairstylist to death, and they previously went to the house to know the layout. “He told me…she’s going to unlock the door,” Austin said.
Austin said he had never heard of the defendant directly, but Baker told him he wanted her to “go” her husband, and then told him that it was for insurance money.
“Everything he did after he received the text message said he was talking to her through text message,” Austin testified. “I didn’t hear him talk to her on the phone…but everything happened in turn.”
During cross-examination, defense attorney Leonard Levine had Austin explain how he changed his story since he was first taken into custody, telling police that they were only intended to troll hairstylists.
Baker said the pair found a hairstylist in the patio area and stabbed him several times with an 8-inch hunting knife. Baker said at the time he hadn’t noticed that Austin had stabbed Semenrilli either. They then fled to the Hair Mogul’s car, and he dumped the knife in the hole and threw clothes near the bowling alley.
A minute after the man drove, his daughter, Isabella Semenri, discovered her father’s bloody body and called 911. There, the operator led her through desperate yet unsuccessful attempts to save him.
Baker said he tried to show up at LA Fitness to create an alibi before purchasing cleaning supplies to scrub a Porsche. He abandoned the vehicle in the area without cameras, taking Austin to the bus stop so that he could fly out of town.
At home, Baker said he “removed everything that belonged to her” to hide his relationship with the defendant. He said they didn’t talk for a while, but they resumed their relationship after meeting at Glendale Bar. “We never told her that we killed her husband,” he said.
Behind the bar, the couple continued their relationship through a three-way call using a third-party number that connected them and encoded a “kit” message. Baker admits that in a secret message sent to him in prison, Monica Semenrili asked him to send him something personal.
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies later seized a tube of toothpaste containing Baker’s semen, and prosecutors say he intended to deliver it to the defendant.
During his testimony, Baker described their relationship as a relationship he had control over. When they were in the cells that could be seen to each other, Baker told Monica Cementilly to partially escape and carry out the sexual act. Baker said the defendant also shaved his initials into her pubic hair, calling him “master” and “maestro.”
He later told the court that he had sex with the defendant while in his cell, calling it “incarceration.”
But Baker said he had not discussed the murder over the years despite many prison conversations. Eventually, his ex-lovers realized he had killed his husband, he said. He said he noticed this as “the day she called me AF, the murderer.”
Before he could sue the fight, he claimed that the prosecutor told him that if he had involved his ex-lovers, he could get much less sentences like Austin. He told the prosecutor, “I can’t do that. It would be a lie, but it was granted under cross-examination, which I have never seen the offer of plea on the paper.
In an opening statement, co-defense advisor Blair Burke said there was no evidence that her client was planning to kill him. “There are no statements, no texts or recorded calls,” she said. Burke said her client was “making him believe that Robert Baker didn’t do that.”
Initially, when police responded to the bloody scene, investigators considered the murder to be the job of a so-called knock-knock robber who plagued parts of the San Fernando Valley. Sementilli suffered seven sharp force wounds on his face, chin, neck, chest and thighs, and two small wounds on his left arm.
While the main bedroom of the house is looted, Hair Mogul’s $8,000 Rolex watch remains on the wrist, stoking the attention of detectives about a month after the crime, and LAPD Det. Ryan Verna testified that Baker’s DNA was linked to blood evidence for crime. Baker’s DNA had been captured previously after being convicted in 1993 of committing six sexual offences with a minor.
Baker, on Friday, was angry and refused to answer questions about the conviction.
The judge removed the ju judge from the court and then ordered Baker to answer the questions based on the threat of hitting all his testimony and ordering him to ignore it. He admitted to being re-arrested twice for not registering as a sex offender.
As the death investigation continued, detectives realized 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.
LAPD DET. Mitzi Roberts testified that Monica Sementilli almost missed the exit from the target as he was distracted, and showed the ju apprentice a security video on the screen of a large courtroom.
A few weeks before the arrest, LAPD investigators monitored the widow and Baker when they became suspects and watched together on a gorgeous trip to cars, bars, comedy clubs and Las Vegas.
After detectives pulled the pair with Monica Semenrilli’s Black Mustang, officers put them together in the back of the police car after Baker got on the wheel. The video recording system is said to have Monica tell Baker “denies everything and don’t talk.”
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