To hear convicted murderer Robert Baker tell it from the witness stand, his ex-lover Monica Sementilli was never part of a conspiracy to fatally stab her famous hairstylist husband and make it look like a home invasion gone wrong.
“I murdered him because I wanted her,” Baker told jurors recently in the high-profile Los Angeles murder trial. “She had nothing to do with it,” the star defense witness testified before a packed downtown L.A. courtroom.
Monica Sementilli has pleaded not guilty to charges of murder with special circumstances and conspiracy.
The reason he killed the husband of his ex-lover, Baker said, was because he was fed up with sharing her and living a life of secret liaisons. Baker is now serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole for the killing.
More than eight years after Fabio Sementilli was stabbed to death on the patio of his Woodland Hills home, Baker tried his best to bolster his one-time lover’s defense.
But under cross-examination by Deputy Dist. Atty. Beth Silverman, Baker struggled to explain why he has provided multiple versions of the murder — including statements in a seven-page letter he gave to Monica Sementilli after he agreed to plead no contest to the Jan 23, 2017, murder.
“You have repeatedly changed your story to fit the evidence in this case, correct?” Silverman said.
Baker acknowledged that he had tried deliberately to cover up the identity of an accomplice, Christopher Austin. “I lied about the second person,” Baker told the prosectuor.
The convicted killer insisted he lied in the letter — and initially to Monica Sementilli’s defense team — because those accounts were “unofficial.” He said he always told the truth under oath, “when I swore.”
In more than 50 days of trial, prosecutors have argued that Monica Sementilli “was the mastermind” of the plot to kill her husband, a Canadian hairstylist and executive of the German hair-care giant, Wella. Her goal was to pocket $1.6 million in life insurance and avoid the complications of getting a divorce, prosecutors allege.
Baker, 62, is a convicted sex offender and former porn star who met Monica Sementilli as a racquetball coach at West Hills LA Fitness and became her lover.
Asked by Silverman to explain why, on the day of the murder, he and Monica Sementilli both deleted the encrypted Viber app on their phones, Baker answered: “it was glitchy.” Following their arrest, the pair were overheard discussing the phone and messaging app, and whether authorities could break in and read their messages in the aftermath of the slaying.
Baker also admitted to buying burner phones, one of which was in Monica’s purse when the LAPD arrested them in her Ford Mustang GT six months after the slaying.
In court Friday, Silverman displayed a photo taken at Fabio Sementilli’s wake, where Baker can be seen sitting in the area where the killing occurred. Monica Sementilli is seen just feet away in the image. Silverman asked Baker whether he slipped the burner phone to her at the wake and he denied it.
But Silverman pointed out that Monica Sementilli had used the phone just days later in Canada, during funeral proceedings in Toronto — Fabio Sementilli’s hometown.
Baker also admitted under questioning that the widow sent him naked photos of herself with her wedding ring still on her finger. “Everyone grieves differently,” Baker declared.
Baker’s version of events contradicted testimony given by Austin,the prosecution’s star witness. Austin had fled the killing with Baker in the dead man’s Porsche — a detail authorities didn’t discover until October, when they arrested Austin, an Oregon probation officer.
Austin pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in Fabio Sementilli’s death and got 16 years to life. He told the jury recently that the stylist’s widow “wanted him dead.” He testified that he and Baker stabbed the hairstylist to death after Monica Semetelli left the door to the couple’s house unlocked, and that they had previously been to the house and knew the layout. “He told me… she is gonna leave the door unlocked,” Austin said.
Austin said he never heard directly from the defendant, but Baker told him she wanted her husband “gone” and afterward told him it was for the insurance money.
“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.”
During cross-examination, defense attorney Leonard Levine 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.
Baker said the pair found the hairstylist in a patio area and stabbed him several times with an eight-inch hunting knife. Baker said that at the time, he did not realize that Austin also stabbed Sementilli. They then fled in the hair mogul’s car and he dumped the knife in a hole and tossed his clothes near a bowling alley.
A minute after the men drove off, daughter Isabella Sementelli discovered her father’s bloody body and called 911, where an operator guided her through a desperate yet failed attempt to save him.
Baker said he tried to create an alibi by appearing at the LA Fitness before buying cleaning supplies to scrub the Porsche. He abandoned the vehicle in an area with no cameras, and took Austin to a bus station so he could catch a flight out of town.
At home, Baker said he got “rid of everything that belongs to her” to hide his relationship with the defendant. He said they didn’t talk for a while but resumed the relationship after meeting at a Glendale bar. “I never told her we killed her husband,” he said.
Separated and behind bars, the couple continued their relationship through three-way calls using a third-party number that connected them and coded “kite” messages. Baker acknowledged that in one secret message sent to him in prison, Monica Sementilli asked him to send her something personal of his.
Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies later seized a toothpaste tube that contained Baker’s semen, and prosecutors say he intended to have it delivered to the defendant.
During his testimony, Baker described their relationship as one in which he was in control. When they were in cells visible to each other, Baker said he told Monica Sementilli to partially disrobe and perform a sexual act, which he said she did. Baker said the defendant also shaved his initials into her pubic hair and called him “master” and “maestro.”
He later told the court that he had also performed sex acts for the defendant while in his cell, calling it “jailing.”
Baker, however, said they did not discuss the killing over the years despite numerous jailhouse conversations. Eventually, his ex-lover figured out that he killed his husband, he said. He realized this “the day she called me a f— murderer,” he said.
Before he pleaded no contest, he claimed that prosecutors told him he could get a far lesser sentence — much like Austin’s — if he implicated his ex-lover. He said he told prosecutors, “I can’t do that. That would be a lie,” but conceded under cross-examination that never saw a plea offer on paper.
During opening statements, Blair Berk, co-defense counsel, said there was no evidence of her client plotting to kill. “There is no statement, no text, no recorded phone call,” she said. Berk said her client was “duped into believing that Robert Baker” didn’t do it.
Initially, when police responded to the bloody scene, investigators considered the killing 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, About a month after the crime, LAPD Det. 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 committing six sex crimes with a minor in 1993.
Baker, on the witness stand Friday, grew angry and refused to answer questions about that conviction, which saw him dismissed from the U.S. Army — where he was a staff sergeant — and sentenced to two years in prison.
The judge removed the jury from the courtroom and then ordered Baker to answer the questions under the threat of striking all his testimony and ordering jurors to ignore it. He admitted he was twice re-arrested for failing to register as a sex offender.
As the death investigation continued, detectives 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.
LAPD Det. Mitzi Roberts testified that Monica Sementilli was so distracted that she nearly missed an exit from a Target, showing jurors a security video on a large courtroom screen.
For weeks before the arrests, LAPD investigators surveilled the widow and Baker as they became suspects, seeing them together in cars, bars, a comedy club, and on a luxury trip to Las Vegas.
After detectives pulled the pair over in Monica Sementilli’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.”
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