Global Courant
The man accused of brutally stabbing a barber magnate to death at his Woodland Hills home during a 2017 murder sparked by an extramarital affair pleaded guilty to the crime on Friday and will spend the rest of his life in prison .
Robert Baker, 61, admitted to killing well-known hairdresser Fabio Sementilli on January 23, 2017, leaving him in a pool of blood in what was initially thought to be a home robbery gone wrong. He was immediately sentenced to life without parole by Los Angeles County Supreme Court Justice Ronald Coen after a steady stream of Sementilli’s loved ones told the court how the mogul’s murder caused irreparable damage to their family.
“I will never recover from this and there will never be closure for our family,” said Stephanie Avola, who was Sementilli’s niece by marriage. “There will always be a void in the form of Fabio that can never be filled.”
Six months after the murder, Los Angeles Police Department detectives arrested Baker and the hair magnate’s wife, Monica Sementilli, revealing that they had been in a relationship before the murder. Prosecutors alleged they killed the 49-year-old Canadian-born hairstylist as part of a plot to collect $1.6 million in life insurance.
“Fabio Sementilli was a direct target in this case,” said then-Los Angeles Police Department Captain Billy Hayes, who headed the bureau’s robbery-homicide division. “Monica Sementilli and Robert Baker had an intimate relationship for a year and a half.”
Monica Sementilli’s trial is still ongoing and she and Baker have been incarcerated for more than five years.
When the LAPD responded to the house and found Robert Sementelli stabbed to death, it was initially believed to be the work of burglars who were ravaging parts of the San Fernando Valley. But while the home’s master bedroom was ransacked, the attackers never took the hair magnate’s valuable watch on his wrist, sparking the interest of detectives, Hayes said. Surveillance camera footage showed two hooded men running to the house before the murder. The men then drove off in Sementilli’s Porsche and were recorded on another surveillance camera as they abandoned the vehicle five miles away.
In an apparent attempt to cover up their actions, the two men took a video recording system hidden in the home’s garage that captured video from six different cameras inside the home, prosecutors said.
Detectives boxed in Baker after discovering blood in the abandoned Porsche. His DNA had previously been captured after he was convicted in 1993 of lewd and lascivious conduct with a minor and forced to register as a sex offender, Hayes said at the time.
A grand jury indictment eventually revealed that the motive for the gruesome murder went beyond money.
Prosecutors alleged that Monica Sementilli told Baker how to remove the home’s video recording system. They presented evidence that she and Baker had remote access to the video security system and accused Monica of watching a live feed of the area shortly before the murder to ensure Baker had a clear path to her husband. Prosecutors alleged that she even had her 16-year-old daughter come home first to discover the crime scene.
“Monica fully intended to have Fabio killed,” Deputy Dist. Attention. Beth Silverman told a grand jury in 2017. “She wanted him out of the way because she wants to be with Robert Baker. She is unhappy in her marriage, even though she acts like the loving, adoring wife at the same time.”
At Friday’s hearing, many of the victim’s loved ones expressed horror at Monica’s betrayal, with some noting that she appeared “insincere” in her mourning for her husband in 2017.
Loretta Picillo, Sementilli’s older sister, said she still cannot forget how Monica feigned grief side by side with their family, even after she allegedly played a part in her husband’s death. Others said the murder had made them so paranoid that they either increased security at their homes or now refuse to sit anywhere in public with their backs exposed.
“You never know who is conspiring against you,” said Anthony Picillo, the victim’s cousin.
Monica Sementilli has pleaded not guilty and denied all allegations.
“I wish we knew who the real killer was,” said her attorney, Leonard Levine. ‘We only know it wasn’t Mrs. Sementilli. She loved her husband very much.”
Fabio Sementilli, was a vice president of education for the cosmetics giant Cory.
“Sementilli guided tens of thousands of hairdressers with a hands-on approach, either on a one-to-one basis or on a larger scale,” Modern Salon, an industry publication, once wrote about him.
After her brother’s death, Mirella Rota Sementilli said on Facebook that her brother had an “intense existence” that affected family, colleagues, friends and the beauty industry.
“You have left precious memories that we will forever hold close to our hearts,” she wrote. “I will never accept the suffering they put you through because being your older sister meant taking all your pain with you. I am so hurt and I hope you will give me strength and guidance to live the life you were so proud of.”
Days before his death, Fabio Sementilli had posted a photo of his 1987 certification as a hair stylist to Facebook in honor of his 30 years of work in the field.
“(Thirty years) ago today I received my hairdressing certification and my professional career began with optimism, a work ethic from an immigrant family with no significant hairdressing background, but I had a strong conviction with hopes and dreams,” he wrote..
