Hearing convicted murderer Robert Baker tells from the witness stand that his former lover, Monica Sementilli, was never part of a plot to fatally stab her famous hairstylist husband and make it look like a family invasion.
“I murdered him because I wanted her,” Baker recently Famous Los Angeles murder trial. “She has nothing to do with it,” the star defense witness testified before a downtown crowded with Los Angeles courtrooms.
Monica Sementilli pleaded not guilty to special circumstances and conspiracy.
Baker said the reason he killed his ex-lover’s husband was because he was tired of sharing her and living a life of a secret contact. Baker is now serving his sentence and there is no possibility of parole.
After more than eight years of being stabbed to death on the terrace of Fabio Sementilli on Woodland Hills Home, Baker did his best to strengthen one of his lover’s defenses.
But after interrogation by the deputy deputy bureau. Atti. Beth Silverman, Baker worked hard to explain why he offered multiple versions of the murder, including statements he made in the seven-page letter he agreed to for the January 23, 2017 murder.
“In this case, you’ve changed the story repeatedly to fit the evidence, right?” Silverman said.
Baker admitted that he had deliberately concealed the identity of his accomplice Christopher Austin. “I lied to the second person,” Baker said to the judge.
The convicted killer insisted that he lied to the letter, initially to Monica Sementilli’s defense team, because the claims were “informal.” He said he always told the truth under oath: “When I swear.”
In more than 50 days of trial, prosecutors argued that Monica Sementilli was the “planner” of the plot that killed her husband, the husband of Canadian hair stylist and German hair giant Wella. Prosecutors claim she aims to earn $1.6 million for $1.6 million in life insurance and avoid complications of divorce.
Baker, 62, a convicted sex offender and former porn star, met Monica Sementilli at West Hills La Fitness and became her lover.
Silverman asked to explain why both he and Monica Sementilli deleted the encrypted Viber app on their phones on the day of the murder, and Baker replied: “It’s clumsy.” After being arrested, the two heard discussions on the phone and messaging apps, and whether authorities could break in and read their messages after the killing.
Baker also admitted to buying a burner phone, one of which was in Monica’s wallet, when LAPD arrested her Ford Mustang GT six months after the killing.
Undated shots by Monica Sementelli and Robert Baker.
(LAPD)
In court Friday, Silverman showed a photo in Fabio Sementilli’s Awakening, where Baker could be seen sitting in the area where the killing took place. Monica Sementilli is only a few feet away in the image. Silverman asked Baker if he slid the burner phone to her when he woke up, and he denied it.
But Silverman noted that Monica Sementilli used the phone a few days later at a funeral in Toronto, Canada – the hometown of Fabio Sementilli.
Baker also admitted that the widow still put her wedding ring on her fingers. “Everyone’s sadness is different,” Baker declared.
Baker’s version of the incident contradicts the testimony of the prosecutor’s star witness Austin. Austin fled the killing with Baker in the deceased’s Porsche – a detail authorities didn’t arrest Oregon probation officer Austin until October.
Austin pleaded guilty to second-degree murder in the death of Fabio Sementilli and lived for 16 years. He recently told the jury that the stylist’s legacy “wanted him to die.” He testified that after Monica Semetelli left the door of the couple’s house, he and Baker stabbed the hairstylist and died of death, they had been to the house before and knew the layout. “He told me… she was leaving the door,” Austin said.
Austin said he never heard of the defendant directly, but Baker told him she wanted her husband to “leave” and then told him it was for insurance money.
“Everything he did after receiving the text message told me he was talking to her via text message,” Austin testified. “I didn’t hear him talking to her on the phone…but it all happened.”
During cross-examination, defense attorney Leonard Levine explained how Austin changed his story when he was initially detained, and told police they were only going to make the hairstylist bold.
Baker said the two found a hairstylist in the patio area and stabbed him several times with an eight-inch hunting knife. At the time, Baker said, he didn’t realize that Austin had stabbed Sementilli, too. Then they fled to the tycoon’s car, who threw the knife into a hole and threw his clothes near the bowling alley.
One minute after the man drove away, his daughter Isabella Sementelli found his father’s bloody body and called 911, where an operator was there to guide her desperately but failed to save him.
Baker said he tried to create a kind of absent proof by appearing in LA Fitness before buying cleaning supplies to scrub Porsche. He gave up the vehicles in the area without cameras and took Austin to the bus stop so he could fly out of town.
Baker said at home that he “had been free from everything that belonged to her” to cover up his relationship with the defendant. He said they didn’t speak for a while but regained their relationship after meeting at Glendale Bar. “I never told her we killed her husband,” he said.
The couple separated, behind the prison, connected with a tripartite phone and coded a “kite” message, continuing their relationship via a three-way phone call. Baker admitted that in a secret message, Monica Sementilli asked him to send her some personal information.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputies then grabbed a toothpaste tube containing Baker’s semen, which prosecutors said he intended to hand over to the defendant.
In the testimony, Baker describes their relationship as a relationship he controls. Baker said when they were visible to each other, he told Monica Sementilli partially to disrupt and perform sexual acts, which he said she did. Baker said the defendant also abbreviated his name to her pubic hair, calling him “Master” and “Master.”
Later, he told the court that he also had sex for the defendant in the cell, calling it “incarceration.”
However, despite many prison conversations, Baker said they have not discussed the murders for years. Eventually, his ex-love discovered that he had killed his husband, he said. He realized “the day she called me AF – the murderer”.
Before he argued the game, he claimed that prosecutors told him that if he hinted his former lover, he might have been sentenced much less, just like Austin. He said he told the prosecutor: “I can’t do it. That would be a lie.
Co-defense attorney Blair Berk said in his opening remarks that there was no evidence that her client conspired to murder. “No statements, no words, no record phone calls,” she said. Burke said her client “deceived Robert Baker” not to do so.
Initially, when police responded to the bloody scene, investigators believed the killing was the so-called job Door knocking thieves that plague parts of the San Fernando Valley. Sementilli had seven sharp wounds on her face, chin, neck, chest and thighs, and two small wounds on her left arm.
When the home’s master bedroom was looted, the hair tycoon’s $8,000 Rolex watch remained on his wrist, catching the interest of the detective, about a month after the crime, LAPD DET. Ryan Verna testified that Baker’s DNA was closely related to blood evidence related to crime. Baker’s DNA was arrested after being convicted of six sex crimes with a minor in 1993.
Baker was angry at the Witness booth Friday and refused to answer questions about the conviction, which led to him being fired from the U.S. Army – he was a clerk sergeant and sentenced to two years in prison.
The judge removed the jury from the court and ordered Baker to answer questions under the threat of strike all testimony and ordering jurors to ignore it. He admitted that he was re-arrested for not registering as a sex offender.
As the death investigation continues, detectives notice that the killer has deleted the house’s video recording system, which is not easy to find. When investigators tied widows to former porn stars, a forensic technologist testified that he collected instructions from Baker on how to access home security DVR.
lapd det. Mitzi Roberts testified that Monica Sementilli was so distracted that she almost missed a target, showing jurors a security video on the Grand Court screen.
In the weeks before the arrest, LAPD investigators monitored widows and bakers while becoming suspects, saw them together in cars, bars, comedy clubs, and luxury trips to Las Vegas.
Baker was on the steering wheel and the police placed them in the back of the police car after detectives pulled the two to Monica Sementilli’s Black Mustang. The video recording system allegedly captured Monica telling Baker, “Don’t talk.”
