An attorney representing a woman accused of masterminding the murder of her husband — a prominent hairdresser — told jurors Monday that his client was happy living a double life and carrying on an extramarital affair, but that she “didn’t want to kill her husband.”
In his closing argument in Monica Sementilli’s murder trial, defense lawyer Leonard Levine told the downtown Los Angeles jury that she was not going to leave her husband, Fabio, despite her affair with now-admitted murderer Robert Baker.
Sementilli, 53, is charged with murder and conspiracy in connection with her husband’s Jan. 23, 2017, stabbing death in the family’s back yard, shortly before the couple was set to celebrate their 20th wedding anniversary.
The murder charge includes the special circumstances of murder for financial gain and murder while lying in wait.
Baker, now 62, pleaded no contest in July 2023 to first-degree murder and conspiracy to commit murder and admitted the two special circumstance allegations. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole — the same sentence that Sementilli could face if she is convicted as charged.
Baker, who was called to the stand during the defense’s portion of the case, maintained that the mother of two had nothing to do with the plan to kill her husband.
A third defendant, Christopher Austin, who was working as a parole and probation officer dealing with at-risk youths in Oregon at the time of his arrest last year, pleaded no contest in January to second-degree murder and is facing 16 years to life in state prison in connection with a plea deal reached with prosecutors.
Austin, now 39, testified that his longtime friend, Baker, told him that she wanted her husband dead, but Austin acknowledged that he did not personally speak to Sementilli about the crime.
Wrapping up her closing argument Monday morning, Deputy District Attorney Beth Silverman told jurors that “it’s very obvious that the defendant along with her lover murdered Fabio Sementilli along with assistance from Christopher Austin” and that the murder was “committed for financial gain as well as for other motivations — in other words, for their future together.”
She also urged jurors to find true the lying in wait special circumstance allegation, saying that the woman’s husband was “ambushed based on a secret plan or design that the defendant and her lover put into place” and that Austin backed out of an effort to kill the victim a night earlier as he was picking up a take-out order at a restaurant.
Sementilli’s attorney countered, “They’ve got the two guys who brutally killed him and they want a third … The question is was there even a third member of the conspiracy? And have they proven that Monica Sementilli was the third person?”
The defense lawyer described Baker as a “Svengali,” saying that Sementilli made the “biggest mistake of her life” in becoming involved in an extramarital affair with him.
“Nothing good came from Mr. Baker, but he’s gone for life,” Levine said of Baker’s plea and subsequent life prison sentence. “Now they want to complete the circle and send her away.”
The defense attorney questioned why Los Angeles police waited four months to arrest Baker in connection with the killing, saying that “they left the murderer on the street — Baker — and they decided we’re going to find more evidence against her.”
Levine said investigators secretly followed Sementilli and Baker and tried to find anything they could but only proved that “she was having an affair.”
“You will not hear us come up here and excuse or explain one of the acts she did in having the affair or covering up the affair,” he said.
But the defense attorney questioned whether jurors needed to hear about sexually explicit photos that Sementilli had taken of herself, and suggested that Baker was the one behind a photo in which Sementilli posed in front of a mirror on which “Mrs. Baker” was written.
“She didn’t want to kill her husband. She was happy the way it was. The affair was secret. She was living a double life for a whole year and two months,” said Levine, who is set to continue his closing argument Tuesday. “Whatever you think about that and I’m sure it’s not much, it was working, but it wasn’t working for Baker.”
“She was obsessed with her family not finding out, with anybody not finding out, especially when he was murdered, not because she was part of the murder, but because she was having an affair, an affair and then he’s murdered,” Levine said, telling jurors that his client has “paid dearly” by spending nearly eight years in jail.
He said it was obviously not right for Sementilli to continue her affair with Baker after her husband’s killing.
Levine said the woman finally broke off the relationship with Baker while both were behind bars because it had become clear that he had killed her husband.
In the first day of her closing argument last week, the prosecutor called Sementilli “the mastermind behind her adoring husband’s gruesome murder.”
“… What she did to Fabio was the ultimate betrayal …the fact that she was pretending to be this loving wife and mother every day, day in and day out … while plotting his murder with her lover,” the prosecutor said. “The fact that she lured him into thinking their marriage was solid and then had him murdered in his favorite place shows how evil this crime was.”
Silverman told jurors that Sementilli and Baker were involved in an “obsessive, all-consuming love affair” in which the two “believed they had found their soul-mates in each other.”
“… This was clearly a targeted hit,” the deputy district attorney told jurors. “They had been planning this for quite some time.”
The prosecutor said a critical piece of evidence was Sementilli’s decision to give her lover the password information for the family’s home surveillance system, noting that Sementilli and her husband had two teenage daughters and that Baker was a registered sex offender.
She subsequently deleted the email in what was evidence of “consciousness of guilt, ”according to the prosecutor
“The defendant wasn’t going to do the dirty work herself, right? She’s not going to kill Fabio,” Silverman said. “She knew that Baker would because Baker is a stone-cold killer. He’s willing to do it and she knows that he’s going to find somebody to assist him, who’s loyal to him, in order to kill Fabio.”
The prosecutor called it an “implausible, ridiculous tale” that Baker — whom she called “about as bright as a rock” — managed to extract inside information from Sementilli about when her husband would be alone on two occasions, including the failed murder attempt at a strip mall the night before he was killed, without her being involved in the murder plot.
“She’s waiting and watching for the opportune time,” the deputy district attorney said. “We know the defendant is the one who has to set this up.”
The prosecutor said Sementilli and Baker “got what they wanted, which was Fabio dead and plenty of money to start a new life.” Silverman said the two went to great lengths to cover their tracks and destroy evidence, but were “very arrogant” and “made mistakes.”
Investigators subsequently discovered explicit photos Sementilli allegedly sent Baker in which she posed naked while wearing her wedding ring after returning to Canada for her husband’s funeral services shortly after his killing, along with hundreds of similar photos before her husband’s death, according to the deputy district attorney.
“They told you she was devastated by Fabio’s death, yet what you heard was dramatically different from all of that,” the prosecutor said.
In testimony last month, Levine asked Baker if Sementilli had “anything to do with the planning or the execution of the plan to kill Fabio Sementilli.”
“No,” Baker responded.
“You’re sure?” the defense attorney asked.
“I’m positive,” he responded.
Baker told jurors, “I murdered him (Fabio Sementilli) because I wanted her.”
“Well, you kind of had her already, but not the way you wanted or what?” the defense attorney asked.
“Absolutely,” Baker responded. “I didn’t have her the way I wanted her … I wanted her to be around me and with me more — like all the time.”
Baker acknowledged that he did time behind bars for lewd and lascivious acts involving a 15-year-old girl, with whom he subsequently “got together” and performed in the “adult entertainment business” and said that he later worked as a racketball league director at a Woodland Hills gym, where he met Sementilli.
Baker testified that he eventually met Fabio Sementilli and the couple’s two daughters, but he said he and Sementilli kept their affair secret “in every way possible” mainly at her behest.
He said that their meetings were “very sporadic” and that “she called the shots on that based on her schedule.”
Both of Sementilli’s daughters testified during the trial, each telling jurors that they believed that their mother is innocent. They said they had no idea that she was having an extramarital affair until after her June 2017 arrest in connection with the killing, although her older daughter, Gessica, testified that she had found Baker in her mother’s bed one morning.
Jurors heard a series of courthouse lockup recordings of conversations between Sementilli and Baker, including one in Van Nuys shortly after they were taken into custody. Baker can be heard repeatedly expressing his love for Sementilli and telling her that he’s “all in” and that he thinks they should get married.
“Just because we fell in love does not make us criminals,” Sementilli can be heard telling Baker at one point.
Sementilli and Baker have remained behind bars since their arrests in June 2017, when they were charged with murdering her husband. A conspiracy charge was subsequently added against them.
The two were indicted just over two months later on the same charges.
Austin has also remained behind bars since his arrest.